Huddled Close to the Fire

The older you get, the colder you get

By Lutavia on iStock (image licensed by author)

Visiting my grandparents was always rough.
You stop by in the winter, the thermostat set
to Hell, Third Circle. In the summer there was
no summer except outside where you sat in
a lawn chair under a shade tree, the house too
hot in the day unless you were a monkey
from Africa, but at night they opened the door
and windows so you could breathe, but I still
slept on the porch in a stiff chair, air conditioning
something they never believed in, such a waste
of money to chill air they said shaking their heads.

My grandfather was what his generation
called rail thin, or as lean and as hard
as a rail on a train track. He never owned
a car, rode the bus, but mostly walked,
sometimes twenty miles a day, leaving early,
stopping for lunch, just wandering until
the sun started to drop and he finally
made his way home. You would know it
was him walking from miles away, the last
man in America still walking in dress shoes
and a fedora hat.