The Simple Life

This morning when I woke at 4 am with no furnace running and a nose that felt like a Popsicle, I had to jump out of bed and figure out how to take care of my family so they wouldn't freeze to death!  Stumbling in the dark, I groped my way out to the living room bureau and pulled out a couple of flashlights. Holding one in my mouth while shining it on our open junk drawer, I found matches, lit a couple candles and lit the stove for a little warmth.  I found another quilt to put over mom (visiting us from Olympia,) wrapped myself in a blanket and sat down with a cup of hot tea. In the quiet, I drifted back to a family story of my great great grandma living in a log cabin with 13 children to keep warm in the frigid W. Virginia winter.  What a lot of work that must have been.  Our electricity goes out and that means I have to heat water for tea on the stove instead of the microwave.  It means we will have to drive down the road to our neighbors for lunch in a warm car. It means I will have to wait to do the laundry.  Hmmm. I wonder if GG Grandma would feel pity for me. It is told she didn't have shoes so warmed a slab of maple-wood by the woodstove, flung it out on the snow by the wood pile and then stood on the slab, splitting the wood until the wood pad got cold. Then she would scoop up the piece she stood on and the wood she had split, run back into the house, warm up the slab for another go round with splitting wood.  Would she feel sorry for me?