Writing Samples

The sun always shines
by Kevin Dowler

What a great day, the sun is shining and not a breeze in the trees.

Getting ready to throw my left leg out of the bed with the rest of my body to follow, the radio man says,

“It’s minus 37 today and tomorrow’s expected high is minus 45.”

I immediately pull my leg back under the covers and look again out the window.

How can the day look so deceivingly warm and be so unbelievably cold.

Diving under the covers to come up at the opposite end of the bed I stretch out my arm to my dresser and grab a pair of socks, shirt, pants and long underwear and pull them all under the covers.

Fully dressed but still under the covers my next thought goes to the awful feeling that I have to get out of bed if I want to eat and even worse, go to the bathroom.

“Boy, it sure is cold out there,” the radio man say’s after a dozen or two bad jokes on tropical vacations.

Bad cold weather jokes about people in warm places spur me into action.

Throwing aside the bedsheets, I hop up and flick the weatherman off by a simple click of the radio dial.

Standing in my room next to a big glass window the sunny sky and white snow look incredibly inviting, but the weatherman ruined it by saying how cold it is here and warm it is in Miami.

“It’s a beautiful day,” I weakly say to myself.

I say it again, this time a little stronger.

“It’s a beautiful day,” I say again’ with more feeling, pressing my nose to the glass.

“Yikes,” I say, jumping back, rubbing my frostbitten nose.

Having convinced myself it is a beautiful day to stay inside, my hopes pick up by thinking about the many things I can do inside all day long.

I could paint a picture.

But I’m out of white paint and would have to go outside to get to the store.

I could read a book. But I’ve read all of mine, except of course, my college texts, which no one is really supposed to read, and I’d have to go outside to go to the library.

I could play a game. But I might lose and I cannot handle that kind of stress without being able to go for a walk afterwards.

I know what I want to do. What I want to do is go outside.

A nice walk, bicycle or kayak ride is what I really want but this weather has got me beat.

Shoving my hands deep into the lint held in my pockets, I try not to be overcome by the winter blues.

A ski trip crosses my mind but my recent phobia of cold temperatures has overcome me and I have become housebound.

Housebound today, tomorrow cabin fever, then it will be drawing on the walls and eating out of tins.

No. I’ve got to get a hold of myself. A vision gives me the answer.

A hot beach, the distant palms wavering in the heat and me on a beach chair in cut off shorts and holding a big pink drink with a tiny blue umbrella in it.

It quickly fades back into the fog my breath has cast upon the window which separates me from winter’s cold.

First I go to the wall thermostat and crank it up then I change into, my favorite shorts and summer shirt and then to the kitchen to find the rum and the fruit drinks.

“Auuuugh.” No rum.

Padding my way into the living room wearing my favorite beach sandals, I pick up a stack of National Geographic and head back into the bedroom.

Still sleeping, Dauminique begins to stir when I hop back under the sheets letting in a draft of cold air.

“Is it time to get up?” she asks with her eye’s one half open and one half closed.

Opening one of the magazines to a special section on South Pacific islands, I answer, “Nope, not for another three months, dear”.