Cold Night

I walk around in my apartment wrapped up in a fleece blanket and I sleep with gloves on. The radiator is hot – but … the heat somehow is not filling up my room.

Last night I went out with my siblings, or, at least, two of them – my brother, my sister Siobhan. Joining us was my brother’s girlfriend, and a couple of my brother’s other friends. We were toasty warm in the bar, and then we went around the corner to get burgers and beer. Oh, and hot wings too.

It was very good to be all together. It’s been a while.

One of my brother’s friends George had been interviewed by a TV reporter at an airport during the blackout. We all had seen him on TV, when we watched the footage from our beach house on the Cape. Additionally, George had been standing at a pay phone, calling whoever, trapped in the airport, and he noticed that a photographer was snapping pictures of him with a digital camera. Turns out he was a photographer with the Associated Press. George’s picture went out across the wires that night.

So that night and the next day – George’s face was everywhere.

We called him “the face of the blackout”.

It was as though the blackout had ONLY affected George, and we needed to check in with him periodically, to see how he was taking it.

“Okay … so all airports are closed … let’s see how George handles that information…”

Last night we drank beer, ate wings, licked our fingers, sat over by the radiator, laughed, talked, kept warm … Brendan and Melody went off to a movie, and then Siobhan and I went out for another drink, and a catch-up conversation. But really we were avoiding the frigid air we would have to deal with during our long trips home.

So good when all my siblings are close by – and we can get together. It doesn’t happen enough these days.