hot spot



Everybody has a place they like to go when it's cold.

In my own house, there's definitely a spot that I love - it's pretty much one of my favorite places to be in the house. I don't remember exactly when I started going to it, but I can guess it was around the time my parents bought me my first alarm clock (Snoopy, yeah!) and I started waking myself up for elementary school.

My parents, being Chinese, only believed in having the heat on in the house for a brief time to save money. In the mornings, the heat would start usually around 6:00AM and turning back off at 8:00AM. Even with the heat though, my house was pretty cold. The large, open-air style rooms didn't lend themselves to heating up very fast at all.

Since it was so cold in those early mornings, my body would lumber around really slowly, numbed by the cold air. But I lumbered with a purpose... I would head downstairs.

In a 3.5ft by 3.5ft half-bathroom, a single heating vent would fill the small room with plenty of heat and creat a warm space in a cold house. All alone, still in my PJs, I would sit crosslegged with my back to the vent, close my eyes, and lean back.

Even as the years went by, with the death of my father, to all the unhappy days of junior high and high school, I'd still go there in the cold winter mornings. Even when during university, when I came to visit home, I'd go. The act of waking up early in the morning to go there became as much as an exercise in emptying my mind of all my burdens as it was just trying to stay warm.

It was a small pleasure. And even now, it still is, in some ways.
posted by G at 10:43 PM   |

in?scrip?tion (n-skrip-shun)n.
1. The act or an instance of inscribing.
2. Something, such as the wording on a coin, medal, monument, or seal, that is inscribed.
3. A short, signed message in a book or on a photograph given as a gift.
4. The usually informal dedication of an artistic work.
5. Jeremiah 31:33