It is in my blood…

It is barely 7 in the morning. The phone is ringing. Not to worry, I know who it is – it’s my walking buddy catching me again for an early morning hike. We go through spurts, she and I, walking sometimes daily for weeks on end and then retiring into our own worlds for weeks, months even, exhausted perhaps by our own feverish intensity.

Oftentimes there is A Topic that gets dissected and thrashed around and today we started in on being cold. Or not. She says this about herself: “I come from Siberian great grandparents on the one side, and hardy German stock on the other. I can’t help it that Hitler forced my grandfather to leave Europe and settle in a land that places high value on the thermostat. I need my gusty Siberian winds and breezes! I need to breathe deeply each night! My blood churns with the tundra.”

Okay. I am empathetic. I, too, like open windows at night and I have a great disdain for air-conditioning unless the temps climb well into the nineties and beyond. But her significant other, the guy who shares her space, what of him? “He was born with cold fingers and toes. There’s a condition that keeps him from ever being warm enough. So I tell him, on your side of the room, keep the windows closed. On my side, they stay open.”

I ask if her breeze migrates to his side of the room. “Sure,” she says. “That’s why in the summer he wears flannel pajamas. And a night cap. It’s very cute, he pulls it down low, and he huddles under a warm blanket. What can I do? I tell everyone they’ll have to drill holes in my coffin otherwise I wont be able to breathe! I need the cool air. It is in my blood.”

I envy her. She is a woman that is not afraid to state her needs. And her partner in life? “Oh, you mean the guy who felt compelled to set up a digital camera studio in our older daughter’s bedroom, forcing her to sleep downstairs in the basement when she visits? He does fine.”