Do what you can...

“Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.”
― Theodore Roosevelt

Everyone who knows me, knows how I feel about the winter season:
bleak
cold
gray
cold
confined
cold
dark, and...
cold, so cold...

There is no motivation for me when a chill wraps about my neck and reaches icy tendrils of goosebumps down each vertebrae of my spine.  I fold, fetal.

I bought my husband a sherpa throw last year and have subsequently taken ownership.  It is the only blanket that doesn't need a warm up period-where body temperature must first transfer to the blanket before it can maintain heat.  It's just always "pre-heated."  I wear it loosely from my shoulders as much as is practical.  It can be challenging to wash dishes while fighting to keep the sherpa from falling off my shoulders, and, it is also difficult to navigate the icy driveway with the trash and still keep the sherpa from hitting the deck.

Sometimes, I will turn on the burner to the stove and stand above it warming my hands like I'm outside, homeless, with nothing but a burning metal drum. (I do this when I'm cooking, not just randomly during the day...)  Or, if I'm baking, I'll crack the oven door and bathe in the escaping radiance.

I realize if I just move, I will generate heat, but I would probably have to leave the sherpa behind.  It's very difficult to do jumping jacks while retaining the sherpa; besides, it's counterproductive because the flapping fabric generates too much breeze....

The other challenge to winter is the kids seem to multiply. There just seems to be too many bodies banging around because there is no outside to send them.  The house seems smaller without the square footage of the backyard, and while they do go out when it's cold, it doesn't even last long enough for me to sneak a piece of chocolate in the pantry.  Before I know it, a chapped-cheeked, snot-nose kid is tapping at the door, "Mom, wadda ya eating?"

My children also have the misconception that if they enter the frozen frontier, they somehow inherently "earn" hot chocolate, and after the chocolatey pot has been drained and the cups and spoons-for fishing out the marshmallows-are left abandoned at the table in the remaining tidal pools of milky sweetness; it all seems more trouble than it was worth.

The other day I happened upon a picture in a magazine of a frozen, flooded field in Connecticut.  The local fire department had flooded the field so that it could provide a place for the kids to play ice hockey.  Behind the field sat a red barn, and the whole scene was so idyllic, especially considering the endearing communal implications.

I live in Indiana.  Barns aplenty.  But, somehow, that Connecticut barn represented more.  It wasn't utilitarian.  It did not sit adjacent to a field for planting, but rather, a grassy knoll.  It didn't need a crop.  It was part of that community's theme: rustic and authentic, where the goats made the cheese and quail sponsored the frittatas, and Martha Stewart blessed it all "New England Kosher."

A few days pass and something amazing happened.  Warm air found it's way here, to central Indiana, with enough rain to flood portions of our local fields, and then, just as abruptly, the temperatures  took a nosedive and froze it all.  It just rained and froze.  No snow, just large portions of skating rink from God himself.

I bundled up the kids and we found our way to the middle of a field where our personal rink sat.  We slid and slipped and knocked some pucks across the glassy cold.  We skated through the stubs of harvested corn stalks suspended erect in the ice.  We found a place in the ice where the water must have been blown to freeze the perfect shape of a heart, and we stood two-by-two in the "ice heart" and proclaimed love for our partner; and when I tried to take a picture of the "ice heart," the wind was so cold, the battery gave out.

The cold was bitter enough to make our faces red and raw, but we laughed and played until our fingers and toes stung.  And, when we got home, yes, I made hot chocolate.

It was so cold.  I usually hate the cold so much, but that day-February 1, 2013-gave us something so organic and simple and....warm.

Oftentimes, mothers do what they can..
with what they have...
where they are.

Those are the memories we cherish because we see that we are capable..
that we are blessed with so much..
and, if we are together as a family, then there is no other place to be.