Each year, when the earth tilts 23.4 degrees away
from the sun, a battle begins. It
features no frontal assaults, no marching fire and charges, no close quarter
skirmishes, no blitzkriegs—no bold and brazen tactics of any kind. It is, rather, guerrilla warfare, a furtive
combination of shoot-and-scoot and sabotaging raids, covert insurgency, and
just as covert counterinsurgency. The
battle field is my house. The particular
site of combat is the thermostat. My
wife Kathy likes the temperature cool. I
like it warm. Under cover of darkness,
or when she is occupied in another room, I slink to the thermostat and execute
a clandestine upping of the temperature.
Under the same conditions, Kathy executes a stealth lowering. When my fingertips begin lose all sensation,
I know I have been Yukoned. Kathy has
maneuvered her way to the thermostat.
I have no tolerance for cold. During that time of year when the trees are
“bare ruin’d choirs where late the sweet birds sang,” the boughs aren’t the
only thing to “shake against the cold.”
Every winter is my winter of discontent.
I find no delight in the frolic geometry of frost pasted on my windows,
no joy in the keening cantos of a furying north wind. The cold is neither bracing nor invigorating,
and the only thing it stimulates is the galloping retreat of blood from my
extremities. I dress not in layers, but
in strata. When it’s cold, I wear a
T-shirt, covered by a long-sleeve thermal T-shirt covered by a hoodie, covered
by a winter jacket rated for 20 below zero.
When it’s very cold, I add a
full-length black leather coat given to me years ago by a rock-and-roller
friend. When it’s cold, I wear two pairs
of thinsulate-stuffed gloves, thermal socks, 40-below-zero-rated winter boots,
and a wool knit cap under the hoodie’s hood.
When it’s very cold, I add down mittens, another pair of thermal socks,
and a fleece ear band.
And to that bundling, that upholstering in
cold-repelling materials, I add, for its warming somatic echo, thoughts of the
dog-dayed summer, hot and humid, toilet-tank condensation hot,
arm-sweat-on-the-table humid, the white-sunned swelter of July, the sultry
embrace of August, the very basin of summer when simply forming a thought
sprouts beads of forehead perspiration. Hamlet may have implored the heat to dry up
his brains, but mine scamper lively enough.
John Ruskin asserted that “there is no such thing as bad weather, only
different kinds of good weather,” but I beg to differ. I do
not fear “the heat o’ the sun,” but I do dread the “furious winter’s rages.” Then my brains freeze dry, and even the
prophetic Shelley’s “if Winter comes, can Spring be far behind” holds cold
comfort, the deluded hope of a herald-seeking romantic.
Of course, the cold war quietly rages on during the
summer. Kathy likes the air conditioning
at levels that slow molecular motion. I
dislike wearing sweat pants and a sweater in the house when it’s flirting with
equatorial temperatures outside. So
slyly, oh so slyly, with ninja-like silence, I ratchet the temperature down,
just a notch, then another notch, just a tad, just a smidge, thinking my
ambient alterations so subtle she will never notice the difference. Of course, she does, and is less than sly, or
subtle, at reversing my reversal. Really,
the crevices of time before spring and fall gather the full strength of summer
and winter are the only cease-fires in our relentless conflict.
No doubt age plays a major part in all this. Cold and old are longstanding fellow
travelers. They never bicker. They maintain a shivery relation of
goosebumpery—always have, always will.
Mr. Old sets the stage: he slows my circulation and basic metabolic
rate, thins my fat layer, toggles my hormones, haywires my chemistry and then,
like some arrogant and audacious graffitist, attaches those pesky methyl tags
to my DNA to mark his tissue-aging work.
All the while, Mr. Cold has been circling, his orbit drawing ever
closer, setting up bivouacs along the way, observing with relish the shocks
that flesh is heir to, until, finally, the ground is ceded and he swaggers in
with an icy sneer, gives Mr. Old a high five, and together they establish a
permanent camp.
It can’t be helped.
Biology writes a hack-proof script that we are compelled to follow. We are, as novelist William T. Vollman says,
“shadowed by finitude’s despotism.” And
it’s so despotic that it’s become a stereotype: old men grow colder; old women
grow warmer. So Kathy and I wage
surreptitious war at the thermostat. But
here’s the thing: I hate following
scripts. I hate conforming to a
stereotype. I hate being average. I’d rather be special.
So, here’s my story, and I’m sticking to it: my unspecialness is special. I may be average, but I’m pretty darn good at
being it.
