gooses, geeses

cold fingers, hands, toes. the boys warm their hands and feet by sticking them on warm parts of my body, a practice slightly encouraged by their mother, never by their father. ernie hates the "cold hand shock," as do i, and yet i grit my teeth and wait until their hands and feet are as warm as i once was, making for more of the warm to go around.

when we were children playing in the snow my dad would let us warm our red and raw fingers on his belly. we could almost hear the "tssss" sound and see the steam rising from his skin. he would make faces and tortured sounds but would let us do it, anyway.

this warming tool is only to be used by children, however. there is nothing worse than adults, who are able to warm their own hands on their own bellies, to inflict cold hand shock on another adult, no matter how much love is going around.



this boundary is occasionaly crossed by me and i am told by my husband that i "will be sorry" and that i "will pay for that" which means that there will be an occasion on which he will come in from the cold having shoveled snow, perhaps, or scraped ice from the windshield, and i will, unsuspecting of his evil motives, be offering him hot cocoa or steaming espresso and, as i put his hot mug on the table and turn to the counter to retrieve my own, he will place his utterly frozen (not just cold, mind you) fingers on the small of my back or the nape of my neck invoking screams and failed attempts at running away.

does it not seem utterly unfair to be so shiveringly castigated, though? to "be sorry" and have to "pay" in this frostbitten way for my slightly chilling assaults on him in the mere cool of autumn?