2006-12-04

How I learned to keep warm.

We put the plastic over our windows again this year. Something about keeping the warm in and the cold out. My mother always does this to the windows, every year. She spent many a year with the same man who urged her it would save money by doing this. He also rationed milk. He could hear even the quietest 7 year old open a fridge. Even with the tv on full blast. His own angry thoughts screaming in his head. He always heard the fridge. I always had to tiptoe around him. It is a shame when a mother can spend 14 years with a man and by the time he leaves they still haven’t addressed him as anything other than his nickname. Foresight. Some people just aren’t the father type. Kids feel everything. We knew from the backseat, radio blaring, that when mom is whis-umbling something in the front seat to this man, we are to ask what we are doing. ‘Mshs,,,,mmambmlgng’ we hear. ‘What? What mum? Where are we going?’. You pick up on these things as a child. A whisper meant don’t get their hopes up. We may change our minds. Especially when they maybe kinda sorta thought about taking us to the country to go tobogganing. The plastic reminds me of all these things. Something about keeping the warm in and the cold out.

Katrina at 12:18 AM

2006-12-04

How I learned to keep warm.

We put the plastic over our windows again this year. Something about keeping the warm in and the cold out. My mother always does this to the windows, every year. She spent many a year with the same man who urged her it would save money by doing this. He also rationed milk. He could hear even the quietest 7 year old open a fridge. Even with the tv on full blast. His own angry thoughts screaming in his head. He always heard the fridge. I always had to tiptoe around him. It is a shame when a mother can spend 14 years with a man and by the time he leaves they still haven’t addressed him as anything other than his nickname. Foresight. Some people just aren’t the father type. Kids feel everything. We knew from the backseat, radio blaring, that when mom is whis-umbling something in the front seat to this man, we are to ask what we are doing. ‘Mshs,,,,mmambmlgng’ we hear. ‘What? What mum? Where are we going?’. You pick up on these things as a child. A whisper meant don’t get their hopes up. We may change our minds. Especially when they maybe kinda sorta thought about taking us to the country to go tobogganing. The plastic reminds me of all these things. Something about keeping the warm in and the cold out.

Katrina at 12:18 AM