February 19, 2019

Where we live, here in a small town in Southern Ontario, Canada, I can’t say that it’s been a particularly bad winter. Though we’d been warned that it would be, that there would be a lot of snow and a lot of very cold days, we seem to have dodged that double-headed bullet. For the most part. There has been some snow, and a few days where we were at below zero, Fahrenheit, temperature-wise. But those cold and snow-laden days have been interspersed with a handful of milder days, resulting in what snow we’ve had, melting.

My daughter and I did take advantage of one exceptionally cold Saturday by tackling a task that had needed doing for some time: cleaning out the freezer.

The ice build-up in my freezer made interior of the appliance resemble an iceberg. Believe me when I say I actually hung my head in shame. It’s not a big freezer, either, but it’s big enough for us. It had been a few years since I’d tended to it properly. While the iceberg didn’t threaten our ability to open and shut the thing, it had assimilated the small basket, rendering it stationary.

We needed that cold day in order to put the contents of the freezer outside (we used our blue boxes to hold it all) where they could maintain their frozen state. Then it was simply matter of slowly pouring hot water (from the tap) on the worst of the ice, then bailing out the water and ice chunks and then using the spin mop for what couldn’t be scooped.

I had envisioned hours spent doing this job, but it didn’t even take a full hour. Now the basket is free and can move again, and we have more space than we had, space to be used to take advantage of bargains.

I had reorganized the contents of this freezer a couple of years ago, just before David retired. At that time, we didn’t know how long it would be before he began to receive payments from the his company pension plan. So I spent the couple months ahead buying meat, and I instituted a very anal storage program.

To this day, in my freezer, are five reusable shopping totes: one each for beef, pork, chicken, and hamburger as well as one for things like bacon, seafood, and frozen entrees. I find this is an excellent system because I know where things are, specifically. This means that when I want to pull out a roast of beef, or some stewing beef, or a pork roast, I know exactly where to find it.

That’s not excessively anal for a woman who prints out her grocery list from an excel spread sheet every week. The items are listed in the order I expect to find them in the grocery store, and I even have the estimated price I expect to pay beside each item. And yes, I stick that sucker on a clip and zoom down the aisles in my mobility cart to fetch them.

I considered cleaning out that freezer a major job, but with both of us working together it was accomplished quickly.

 And it almost seems to me that this winter is going to be over just as quickly, too. I know we haven’t had it as bad as so many others, including those of you in the southern United States who seemed to have gotten whacked by snow and ice storms a lot this year. I’m not complaining about our unexpectedly mild winter, but I am curious. Since I know it has been a better winter than expected, why am I so eager to be done with it?

It must be something innate within me, but maybe, not just in me. I think racial memory connects us all to the desire to survive, to thrive, to leave behind the season of hibernation and bounce into the season of new life.

I feel an almost desperate need for spring, for the sight of early sprouting, beautiful blooms and rich green grass. I hunger for the blue skies and warm sunshine that will help nurture the life growing all around us.

And oh, how I long for the scent of lilacs and lilies of the valley once more. 

Love,
Morgan
http://www.morganashbury.com
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