It's already cold

This winter, which started earlier and colder than other years, reminds me of my childhood. Going to school early in the morning, feeling the frost crack under the soles of our shoes, so stuffed with coats that we looked like the Michelin man, the one the Brazilian truck drivers who appeared in town, enormous behemoths, trying to get back on the road, always carried balancing on the mirror. Mouths steaming, small steam engines, chapped cheeks, runny noses. Tangerines in the sun during recess. Fingers and toes enlarged with chilblains. That saying my grandmother never fully understood: July prepares you and August takes you… however, back then, it was about thirty Augusts before one would take her away, just a few days before her eighty-fifth birthday.

We children weren't scared of the cold or the heat. Any time was a good time to jump rope, to jump rope, to run wild. Cascarilla with boiling milk was as good as iced grenadine. Sheep's wool sweaters, hats, gloves. All our armor to go out into battle against the wind. The unheated school classrooms. The principal's wife and teacher showing off her fur coats on the playground walkway, standing out from the others bundled up in their thick wool jackets. A mark of class: they shared the same miserable salary, but she was the boss wife. One year, Grandma inherited a chinchilla coat (we liked the word) from a deceased employer. She was embarrassed to wear it. Where would a poor woman like her, a servant, go in a rich coat? So my sister and I used it to play when she wasn't looking. We dragged him along the cement floor of the house and rolled cigarettes with notebook paper. We were Moria Casán and Susana Giménez, splendid stars, carrying the cats in our arms as they purred against the fur on the coat, believing they were once again lying in their mother's belly.

The wood stove was always lit in the house. Before going to sleep, my mother would put in a thick piece of ñandubay wood, which would slowly become embers and still be burning the next morning. The hot brick on our feet would sometimes burn the newspaper we wrapped it in and, incidentally, a little bit of the sheets. We always smelled of smoke in our hair and clothes, and no one cared: at school, in the neighborhood, all the children smelled the same in the winter.

Grandma's chicken soup, the stews, my father's "buseca" (a kind of "buseca" or "a kind of "meatballs") on national holidays. The military band, the buns and hot chocolate, on August 17th, with the cold taking our breath away, in the courtyard of bare eucalyptus trees.

Winter was also good for doing what I loved most: reading. By the fire or in bed, covered up to my nose. It was when I could be closer than ever to Alcott's girls, as close as possible to their icy landscapes where they skated and ate hot chestnuts. Or to London's novels. On the other hand, Tom Sawyer was pure summer, and Quiroga's stories and the mysterious, half-naked Ayesha were pure warmth. I read one or the other depending on the season. Now that I think about it, the last two novels I read in my room at my mother's house were also in winter: Juntacadáveres and El astillero by Onetti. They were also unseasonable, like those gray days of the mid-nineties.