Some winter days, when the sun is dim from distance and an Oklahoma breeze carries that quick gasp of cold, Harriet touches her neck. Texas temperatures swing in frantic moods: a hot afternoon, a frost on the brown lawns by morning. Maybe out of habit, her fingers chill even on a warm December morning, and their feel against her neck is a sharp one. In Iowa, the lack of scarf or thick coat would be like a sword, or dragon-embroidered silk: impractical, almost dangerously foreign.
If she is with her daughter, the gesture goes overlooked. Harriet doesn’t mention the remembering, even now when only a certain touch or wind succeed as provocations. Any divergence from her old world used to trigger it: the moon (Did she ever watch it in the North?), the absent Scandinavian twist on words, how easily the radio alarms with schools closing and iced bridges. Her daughter never considers the past, but the days were shorter then. A red truck used to push through snow to trade a newspaper for a box of eggs. Every cat seemed to have lost ears and tail from frostbite. The long, dark nights somehow felt warmer.
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