Chill Out

The past few weeks have been unseasonably warm here in Georgia, so I was quite pleased to walk outdoors at 11:30 and discover that it was a brisk 33 degrees. While I'm not a fan of ice and sub-twenty-degree temperatures, I enjoy cold, crisp evenings that make winter feel like winter. I was beginning to think that we were destined to have no winter at all!

(Yeah, I walk a lot. I usually do a couple of miles in the morning before breakfast; another couple of miles in the afternoon; and a short walk of a half-mile to a mile between 11pm and 1am. The night walks are my favorites; I really enjoy the solitude and the darkness and the almost palpable privacy that accompanies a midnight walk. It's a time for reminiscing. As a child, I used to love to play outdoors at night during the summers and on weekends; when I walk, I'm flooded with memories of those many happy nights.

I also use the solitude to talk to Mom, catching her up on what's happening with me and Susan and Kim and Dad down here. I still miss her terribly, and I don't envision ever moving past that; I guess we have to just learn to deal with it. I miss hearing her voice; while we have many photos of Mom, we have almost nothing with her voice on it, and I regret that. But late at night, when I talk to her, I can hear her voice in my mind, and I hear her laugh, and it's a soothing way to bring the day to a close.