Yesterday, my car thermometer registered 34 degrees Fahrenheit.
What?
Fahrenheit?
Where did that come from?
Confused, I squinted my nearsighted eyes and peered at the dashboard trying to understand what my mind could not seem to comprehend.
It was a mystery.
Finally, I figured out that the nice people at the car place where they installed my remote car starter, a brand new, but late Christmas gift from my children had somehow interrupted the workings of my dashboard. The clock showed a time only known to people in a different time zone and the gauge showing the temperature had somehow time travelled back to Fahrenheit.
Holy cow! Who knew?
I pulled into my driveway, pulled the gearshift into park, and sat quietly, reflecting.
Over the car radio came the sounds of never-ending discord; COVID, the truckers’ convoy and, escalating international conflict. I thought of switching radio stations to some ‘50s and ’60 rock ‘n roll, but in the end, I just decided to shut it off.
It was a gentle blue and white January day; the kind of day when I could easily walk across the street and get the mail without even putting my coat on, Did I mention it was 34 degrees Fahrenheit?
The snow in my front yard was losing a battle with the sunshine and was slowly, ever so slowly, disappearing into nothing but a dirty, white crust.
But, somehow, even while I sat there, the image in front of me faded to nothing and, in my mind, I time traveled back to the days when the temperature was measured in Fahrenheit.
In the winters of my childhood, the thermometer outside our curtain-less kitchen window always seemed to be at least forty below.
And the window itself was frosty on the inside and the outside.
My dad either sat at the rickety kitchen table, made that way because my brothers were constantly twisting wrist against each other on its less than even surface, or he stood by the coal and wood stove with his hands behind his back staring morosely out the window.
The dog, a golden nondescript Heinz 57 breed, was always lying somewhere near the stove soaking up the heat as best he could. It was cold in our house. In the morning when we got up, sometimes there was a layer of ice on the water pails. The cracked linoleum on the floor turned bare feet to ice cubes in a matter of seconds.
Often my dad would close the door between the front room and the kitchen just to keep that room warm.
Ahh, yes, those were the days when the thermometer outside the kitchen window burned ice cold, and the red mercury plunged to double digits more often than naught.
And as I think about those days and the harsh Alberta winds that moaned and groaned around our little house on the prairie and temperatures were measured in Fahrenheit, I know I would give all the riches I could ever have in this lifetime to be granted one moment in time to go there again.
One moment in time to watch my dad, stern and as unforgiving as the temperatures themselves, staring out the frosty kitchen window and one moment in time to watch my brothers match each other’s brawn on the kitchen table.
But, my cell phone rings, the jarring sound bringing me back to the present and a soft and gentle day in January when I have been sitting in my car for far too long.
And, so, once again, in my mind, I close that chapter of my life and move on.
I really need to figure out how to change that temperature reading on my dashboard back to Celsius.
On the other hand, maybe not!
Treena Mielke is a central Alberta writer. She lives in Sylvan Lake with her family.