Cold Winter Mornings

One of my memories as a kid is of crawling out of bed on a cold winter morning and slipping downstairs to sit directly over the heater vent, my nightgown billowing up around me from the blowing dry air, creating a toasty little cocoon to sit within as I woke up. Even better was mornings Mom had already dressed and her fuzzy purple bathrobe was hanging on the back of the bathroom door. I would slip that bathrobe over my head and huddle over the heater vent, selfishly hogging all that warm air for myself.

Mom never seemed to mind. She’d be baking biscuits and doing whatever it was she did in the wee early hours of the morning. By the time the biscuits were hot and buttered, the aroma filling the air, the furnace would have kicked off and I’d take myself and my heated clothing to the kitchen table. There was a method to eating fresh biscuits from the oven. The first one you ate straight with butter only, just to savor the warmth and flavor of Mom’s handy-work. The second you covered with gravy, made white and lumpy just for me. The third was dessert with a little homemade jelly on top.

Then it was off to dress for school. Mom would stand by the window, watching for the lights of the bus to pass the neighbor’s house across the field. Her call, “The bus is at Missy’s” was my cue to grab my coat and my bag and run for it. On a good morning, I could time my arrival at the end of the drive with the bus rounding the corner onto our road.

And being the first kid on most days (Missy’s Mom usually drove her to the corner in the winter time for a later pick-up)… I got to sit in the seat with the heater vent blowing directly on my feet, keeping me toasty and warm all the way to school.