Occasionally,

I slip upstairs to sleep after my husband dozes and the

snoring starts. (A sleep study is on the calendar, and

relief may be in sight, I hope!) Anyway, last night was

one of those nights.

The quiet

bedroom I escape to is just at the top of the stairs. We

had a nice toasty fire going in the fireplace last night

and heat had drifted up to warm the entire second floor.

In fact it was as warm, if not warmer, than the

downstairs rooms when I went up.

Not so when

I awoke this morning. The heat was off, so I woke up

cold. Fingers that were sticking out from under the

covers were numb and I couldn't feel my nose. I lay there

wondering if the heating system had failed entirely, or

if it just gotten so cold out that the heat pump was no

longer performing efficiently.

Neither

scenario fit.

I have not

wakened so cold since I was a kid. I snuggled deep,

quickly bringing my numb fingers out twice to slap the

snooze button. Finally, I knew I had to crawl out and

face the music. I went down the stairs to heavenly warmth

and realized I had turned the heat switch off on the

upstairs thermostat a couple of weeks ago, during the

balmy 70s, and forgotten to turn it back on. When I went

to bed I had closed the door, cutting off all the rising

heat from downstairs that had been keeping the area

comfortable.

Not the

heat pump, just the controller this time. Now, an hour

later, I am still wrapped tightly in my PJs and a heavy

robe, pecking away at what sounds like meaningless

dribble.

Not so. As

I shivered earlier, my heart was flooded with warm

memories of childhood and snuggling under the covers with

my sister in houses where cold air ruled until Daddy or

one of my brothers got a fire started in the fireplace.

You'll

never see me marching for women's equal rights when it

comes to building a fire on a cold morning. I appreciate

the men in my life, and I like to have my doors opened

for me, and lots of cool stuff that a few narrow-minded

feminists decided didn't matter to me.

So, I'm

shivering this morning and remembering. I don't know when

the memories became so sweet. For many years they were

sprinkled with embarrassment and insecurity and a tad of

sadness. No more.

Somewhere

along the way I came into my own. I learned to like me,

really like me, a lot. And when I did, I realized that

everything that ever happened to me made me who I am

today. Everything I ever had to do without. Every

hand-me-down. Every cold morning. Every - everything. And

I wouldn't trade my past history for anything.

I will

never forget spending the day with a Russian physician

back in the early `90s. She was about my age and here in

the states on some kind of medical exchange program. The

day was awesome with lots of modern day cultural

dialogue. Food and drink. She drove Daniel's tractor at

the time, the little orange Kubota, and was unbelievably

proud of herself. Heaven only knows how much she'd enjoy

his new John Deere!

It was such

a cool day. And then I asked her to tell me about

herself. She was confused. She tried to talk about her

medical training and her daily duties as a physician and

the cultural wealth of her native land.

"No,"

I said to her, "that's not what I want to hear. I

want to know about you, your childhood, your teen years,

your marriage... you."

"My

history? MY history... no one has ever asked about me,

wanted to know MY history before."

You would

have had to have been there. I don't know if she was just

trying to accommodate her American host, or if I pulled

the plug on a fountain that had needed to erupt for a

lifetime. Her native St. Petersburg came to light the way

no history book could ever have revealed it to me. I'm

not even sure a visit could allow such vision.

After a

while she began to share with me intimate details of her.

No, you'll never read about what she said to me in this

column or anywhere else. Some words spoken and heard

should be held forever in an eternal capsule of time

belonging only to the moment which produced them.

But, some

of the memories we think we need to shove back and keep

hidden on the other side of yesterday have a way of

finding their rightful place in today. Today is a good

day. This present moment is a good moment, though I wish

I could have snuggled longer