A Slice of Life on Tuesday, December 31st

The bitter cold is captured on the frosted bay view window panes this morning. The house moans about the arthritis in her bones. Timbers that were hewn from local hardwood and pine. She's earned the right to complain, being one hundred twenty years old to moan whenever the mood strikes.

As I walk down the stairs to make my morning coffee and oatmeal, she crackles and whines about her third step from the bottom being particularly sore. I've heard this many times from her. She tells the same story over and over again like I've just arrived for a visit, rather than, lived with her for decades. Yet, I listen anyway, and take comfort in the litany of aches and pains.  

My body does its own story telling, as I do my morning stretches on the pumpkin pine floor. Each vertebra in my spine popping like bubble wrap and the deep sighs of tight calf muscles waking up on this last day of sub-zero December.