It's Winter

Last night we sat around the table waiting for the other ladies to arrive for our weekly women's Bible study.  Shpresa confirmed what I had heard -- that it was her son's birthday.  She made a comment about how warm the hospital had been the day he was born.  I responded about how it must be better to have a baby in the winter than be pregnant during a hot Albanian summer.

I was immediately corrected by another.  "Oh, no!" I was told. "In the winter we worry how we can keep our infants warm!"

I immediately felt silly.  Then, in an effort to relate, I shared how when I was born (in December) my parents were living in an old drafty farmhouse in the middle of the prairie, how the curtains would waft in the breezes of a winter wind, so they put me in a cardboard box to sleep above the heating register where I might be warmer than in my crib.

That's all I shared because even that little recitation was all I could muster in Shqip. But my memories wandered to later winters in that farmhouse. Memories of stacking and hauling firewood to heat that drafty place.  Of sealing windows with plastic film that would puff out from the force of  howling winds outside.  It may have been 1982, but other than our electric lights, it might not have been too different than Laura Ingalls herself had to deal with a hundred years earlier. Good preparation for living through Albanian winters.

To be sure, it's not nearly as cold outside as a midwestern winter, but inside -- that's a different story.  I have figured out that when the temperatures fall into the 20s, it's going to be a struggle to stay warm in our concrete box.  It's going to be a struggle to want to take a shower in a bathroom where you can see your breath because to turn on the heater might just put too much strain on the tenuous electrical system. It's a race to dress on cold tile floors, remembering all of the essential layers, like leggings under jeans to keep calves warm, tanks, long sleeve t-shirts, a sweater, vest, and maybe even a jacket then a scarf around the neck because that just seems to make all the difference. I sound like such an old lady.

Then, for some reason, Nathan bought a thermometer that measures outdoor and indoor temperatures.  So now we know how cold we really are in measurable units. That outside of the room with the wood stove, our home's average indoor temperature is in the mid 40s and on sunny days is usually colder inside than out. But I think some part of us likes a struggle,  to know that we are tough and that we can persevere.  After all, we're not worried about keeping a newborn warm.

To be sure, I consult the weather app on my phone looking for a break in the arctic front.  Then I wonder what is worse -- to deal with winter's cold or summer's wilting heat?  I don't know.  Right now, summer feels oh so far away, and I try not to worry about future winters since the 10-year-ban on cutting firewood was announced last week.

Instead, I warm myself inside over genuine conversation with neighbors whose struggles are so much greater than my ability to keep my hands warm or a case of goosebumps.  They don't talk about the cold, so neither will I.