Winter Memories in anticlimatic

My girlfriend claims the aesthetic of our house is built for winter, and I am inclined to agree. Physically and practically, not so much- I’ve got countless draft points plugged with all sorts of rags and insulation and foam board and wood and shingles, ancient sash single pane windows- some of which are cracked- and more than a few loose hatch coverings. My furnace looks to be about as efficient, and modern, as the RMS Titanic.

But it does feel a winter house. On nights like this when the wind pounds the 4” floor joists and rattles the storm windows, and on soft quiet mornings when the pale light of falling snow pours through the old warped glass and everything feels as settled and timeless as ice itself. The radio in the kitchen, the worn wooden floors, and the warmth from the stove keeping away the drafts at the back door. Things like that. It really feels like such a home to me, unlike any I have experienced since my own childhood. It’s stirred memories paired with each season, and now that winter is upon us a few have surfaced.

My father hated the winter, so he’s the ghost of my spring and summer. My grandfather, however, never seemed to mind the cold. Maybe it was his Quebec farm upbringing, or his warm chapeaus, but I associate winter and warmth with him more than anything else I think. That black hat and the grey checkered flannel jacket. I remember so many restaurant booths, on sunday mornings, with brilliant cold winter daylight flooding in through the windows. In my memories I’m drowning in it.

Lately I remember our annual holiday charity adventure, in which my grandpa and I had the tradition of loading up the bed of his truck with a dozen or so crates of dry goods, a dozen or so hams, and a dozen or so turkeys- from the entryway of the cold and long torn down Parish Hall- and snaking our way through the backwoods of the 1980s Michigan countryside, dropping off food to a dozen homes recommended to the church. These people had no idea we were coming, but my grandfather was a salesman and as charming a man as ever there was, so politically I was in good hands despite the awkward premise. I remember some were not too happy to see us, or perhaps they just seemed so, while others expressed some gratitude I think I recall. Mostly I don’t remember, the reactions of the people we delivered food to were not of much concern to me. I was impressed with other things.

For one, it was the first time I had ever seen how rough a person’s home could be. And always with the brutal cold and the blinding snow. I remember trudging through entryways with the crate, ushered forward by my grandpa, and looking down at wet rotten wooden floorboards that squished as I entered. I remember rooves made from tarps, flapping in the frigid wind. Wood stoves glowing in the dark.

The grief for my father has gone to bed for the season, and I miss my Grandpa more and more lately. The world made so much more sense with someone like him in it. He was so confidant, and kind. Always working. I thought people like him were the ones who ran things, kept things going. And I think think they did, for some years. But now they’re gone. And we’re all fucked.