un-shrinking against the cold
it’s been mostly gray, rainy and cold here since around mid-December, save for a few exceptional days of pale sunlight peeking through the clouds now and again. when this cold spell first started i declared proudly to Ulrich, “man, you think minus 2 degrees celsius is bad? this is nothing! back when I lived in Pittsburgh we had sub-zero weather Fahrenheit.”
that was easy to brag about at the beginning, but now that we’re a few weeks in with no end in sight, i find myself confronting the various ways I defend myself against the cold. the way I shrink inwards towards my core, how my shoulders slouch, how i make myself small in an attempt to fill all the hollow spaces with warmth. everything contracts as tension increases: my breaths shorten, my steps accelerate, my perception of time is jagged, syncopated.
our bedroom is the coldest room in the apartment, and i find myself avoiding it (and the accumulating piles of clean yet unfolded laundry) until the last possible moments before going to sleep. I had never heard of this before moving to Germany, but apparently it’s best to sleep in cooler temperatures, i.e. between 60-67 degrees Fahrenheit or 16-19 degrees celsius. Germans happily adhere to this in the winter by switching off the heat and tilting their windows open at night, although I’m not sure that they take the guidance as seriously in the summer (most german homes don’t have air conditioning).
sometimes, in a spontaneous moment of zen, i’ll try to unravel my instinct to shrink against the cold. i’ll allow my breathing to slow down, relax and un-slouch my shoulders, and puff my chest up just a teeny bit as i make my way across the street. I visualize a jazz musician exhaling long, vibrato-y notes on her saxophone instead of frantic beats. and indeed, walking outside feels more pleasant this way, crisp and alive if not actually warm. but in bed at night, sandwiched between ice-cold sheets, it is harder to modulate my breathing when i’m lying still instead of on the go. but then i wiggle myself just a bit closer to Ulrich, whose body somehow emanates heat almost as liberally as a radiator, and try to fall asleep in the shadow of his warm breaths.