Old Winters
The Old Winters were better. I have a gas fireplace now and it’s pretty to sit in front of, to have a morning coffee, to catch a glow of firelight at nights before bed, but it’s not the same. I remember waking up to the front door shutting, the sound of footsteps, and the thump of wood hitting the floor beside the old woodstove. But it was the cold that woke us first. The inhalation of ice into our throats: the Northern Ontario mornings of ice and breathlesesness. The feel of the cold laying on top of the blankets like a long body and the protective warmth under our five layers of blankets. Sometimes I would be wearing mittens and know that my mother slipped them on sometime in the night. And we’d hear the crackling. The crackling of the first kindling to catch and the smoke smells. The smoke would drift into the room that I shared with my two sisters, their bodies scrunched into tight little balls beside me. We’d lay there until we smelled the warmth come into the room, until the crackles became a roar and we’d slowly emerge from the blankets, testing the air like a swimmer tests the water and if it was ready, we’d run out to the morning, gulping the smoke and heat and winter mingling. These old winters I think of now in my easy firelight, my children warm and snug beneath their single-layer blanket, thier hair never smelling like smoke, their heads never too cold that they needed hats in the night. I miss my old winters, the bushsmells, the morning crackles, the long braid of my my sister falling over my nose in the night.
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