Helen Ceci, my voice teacher, once said to me, “What? You never heard of a neck warmer?” “Well,” I told her, “I grew up in New Jersey where people didn’t have to worry about keeping their necks warm.” She made me a neck warmer! And now, whenever I wear one, I think of her.
Our first visit to Shorewood, in 1966, was to see Danny Pierce, a printmaker in the UWM Art Department. Danny had lived in Alaska for several years. Here I was dreading Wisconsin winters, and he had lived in a climate with temperatures of 75 below. I couldn’t imagine how he had coped. So he told me. He always kept the hood of his parka extended well beyond his face, which locked in a layer of warm air. I’ve thought of that a lot these days, every time I step out of the house.
About thirty years ago I took swimming lessons from Georgia Nelson at the Shorewood Pool. Her advice about breathing was similar to Danny’s cold weather suggestion. When doing the crawl, turn your head to the side, halfway submerged. That creates an air pocket so you can breathe easily without swallowing a mouthful of water. That air pocket helped me through years of swimming every day just as the air parka has helped me through forty years of Wisconsin winters.
When I make tomato sauce from fresh tomatoes, I think of our son Joshua; when I cook with a bamboo steamer, I think of our daughter-in-law Pauline. Almost evverything I do connects me to specific people. It’s similar to walking through Shorewood, where I’ve lived for over 37 years: every block has a house or two with its history, people come and gone, or still here. The richness of life is a matter of layers, the people we’ve known for minutes or years. And I'm glad I know that keeping warm is a matter of layers, though I don't remember who taught me that.
