an arctic love story

I am at my in-laws home in Sun City, sitting in their kitchenette, eating my father-in-law's birthday cake and drinking hot coffee.  The AC is set on 80. No one seems to notice as I constantly wipe my face with a napkin, even though I am wearing my lightest summer frock. It's like hell, with cake.

Tonight my AC is set to 72, and Steve and I sit on the couch watching House Hunters, as we are want to do after dinner. I throw a barefoot leg onto his lap.  I am wearing a tank top and hole-y jeans.  He is wearing shorts, a tee shirt, a Detroit Tigers sweatshirt and has a heavy blanket covering most of his body. 

He touches my feet to give me a foot rub. His hands are ice, as if he just pulled himself out of a frozen lake. They feel good to me, even though I am already cold. This is how I like to be.

"I'm so cold," he says with a shiver, then tries to slide his hands behind my back where I am sitting.  "You are so warm."  His ice hands cause me to jump.

This does not bode well for our future.  My resting body temperature is about 99 degrees.  He is getting thinner and needs heat. I was thinking recently that we will need separate bedrooms because of snoring.  Will we have to get separate adjoining houses, instead?

I grew up where there was always a cool tinge in the air; the perfect weather for a sweatshirt, yet also to be barefoot.  Places where you could jump into 60-degree lake and then jump out, and wrap yourself in a blanket and sit in front of a fire, with a draft coming in under the door.  That is comfort to me.

Steve grew up in Florida, where the humidity clings and the heat makes you feel alive. Where you wear shorts and flip flops and can't breathe all year and like it.

We are driving Steve's dad home from dinner.  It's 100 degrees out in Austin and I want to say abut 110 degrees in our car.  He is wearing: an undershirt, a long-sleeve shirt, a light sweater, AND a windbreaker.

"I like the heat," he says in his raspy voice from the backseat. "It feels good on my bones."

Tonight I write this, wrapped in a blanket Scout loved, barefoot.  Steve is in bed at 8 p.m, with 3 blankets, trying to conserve heat.  

"Smell this blanket," I say to him.  "It smells bad, like Scout. I love it."

"No," he says, and turns back to his book.  I imagine soon he will start wearing a beanie, then mittens to bed. Would I make the same sacrifices?  Put ice packs on my body with no covers? 

I guess only time will tell. 

With love.