It snowed for a little while today. I like to watch it snow as long as I'm not required to get out in it for any length of time. Back in the day, my brother, Phillip, and I would get bundled up in long thermal underwear, thick pants and shirts, heavy coats, stocking caps. gloves and scarves. Generally we never had boots of any kind just tennis shoes, so my mom would help us put bread sacks over our shoes and secure the sacks with rubber bands. Then we would go out and try to build a snowman or we would slide down the hill on 40th street on a flattened cardboard box. We didn't have a sled and even if we had had a sled the snow was always thin and wet and a real sled would not have worked. But more times than not after about 20 minutes I would be ready to go back in the house.

I remember Phillip's bottom lip turning blue and just vibrating as he shivered in the cold. There are lots of times I remember playing and having fun, just the two of us. I don't think Phil probably remembers many of those, I was a pretty crappy big brother. I wish I had been nicer to Phillip when we were kids. There was five years between us and that is a lot of difference when your young. Plus, I was so self-conscious and kids were relentless in making fun of me, the guy with one eye, and I needed someone to pick on and make fun of so that I would feel stronger and better about myself, so I picked on Phil. Picking on Phil and being mean didn't make me feel better about myself it made me feel worse in the long run.

I wish that had been different. He was a good kid and he didn't deserve to be treated that way. If I could go back and change one thing from when I was a kid that's the one I would pick. Sorry Phil, I really did love you back then and I still do. (Phil doesn't read my blog so I'm safe confessing, he thinks I'm goofy. He is a pretty good judge of character.)

It is about 11:30pm everyone has gone home and it is just Lynna and I and the four furry daughters. I was just outside with the previously mentioned daughters and it is so amazingly quiet. There are no cars or trucks to be heard, it is a little overcast so everything feels and sounds compressed. There is not a breath of wind to rustle the leaves on the ground. It is so wonderfully silent. This is probably the closest those of us that hear could ever come to understanding what it truly is like to be deaf. While I find it very soothing and pleasurable I am at the same time certain that these feelings are possible because I know it is by choice and only for a short period of time. I like visiting the quiet place in my mind and those that present themselves to us in nature occasionally but for only a short time. I don't think I would like to live in the quiet places for any extended period of time. The escape of too many pictures and thoughts would not be safe and then I would be empty. Better to keep it to short visits and only release a few at a time.

I never said this was going to be funny every day. I only said that I would write every day.