Typically, it is heat that frightens me. Perhaps this is because I grew up in Minnesota, but sweltering temperatures seem more sinister — thick and canopy-like and unavoidable — whereas cold has always struck me as surmountable. Until now.
It was just last week, on what I assumed then would be the coldest night of the year, that my son suffered a relapse of a condition called Autistic Catatonia. We imagine catatonic patients as still and statue-like. Frozen, even when they are warm to the touch. What we do not consider — what I forgot — is that catatonia actually signals an exponential speeding up of the brain; it is what doctors call a "paradoxical condition," meaning the body’s stasis is masking a panic of mind. And it’s often preceded by a bout of mania in which the afflicted individual moves wildly in an effort to shake off the coming storm.
It was in this incipient period that my son began wandering, desperately, after dark. It was 14 below zero the first night he stepped out the door and nothing we did or said could stop this giant young man.
We spent 24 hours, my husband, my younger son, and I chasing, coaxing, begging, warming. We slept in shifts. When dusk fell the following evening and the temperature began to drop again, we knew we couldn’t last through another night. Finally, we called everyone we knew to call. They came, blowing through our front door with a killing cold. And they took my son away.
Tonight, the thermometer will go even lower. But my son is safe. Or rather, he is as safe as a fragile, shuttered soul can be. But there are other people out wandering. I know this, because I’ve come close enough to touch the life they have. And no matter where they seek shelter — in bus shelters, abaondoned buildings or skyways — it’s unlikely they’ll every truly get warm.
Even our house is failing to keep out the cold. Granted, it was built in the 1920’s, and the windows are like loose dentures, rattling with every windy sigh. Our wine rack sits in the south corner of our dining room, and when I removed what promised to be a very nice bottle of Domaine Olivier Bourgogne Pinot Noir tonight, it felt as if it had been thoroughly chilled.
We opened it and toasted, my husband and I, in thanks that our son was not only inside but beginning, gradually, to emerge from his whirring state of mind.
But the first taste was not what we had hoped. "Maybe it’s corked," my husband said. "It’s awfully sour."
I swallowed a bit of wine, its cranberry flavor as sharp as a knife. "Let’s let it breathe," I said, "and warm. I think it will be fine."
In fact, I, too, would have thought the wine was bad, but the finish was too nice. Corked and cooked wines always end badly: raggedly, with hints of sulfur, mold, or lye. This one did not.
We left the bottle open for 20 minutes, then poured individual half-glasses and warmed them in our hands. When we tasted again, the Olivier was entirely different: full and sweet and delicate, with scents of lemon and eucalyptus, and the flavor of wild strawberry, oak, and mint.
By the end of the bottle — and yes, in our relief, we did polish it off — this pinot noir had expanded kaleidoscopically. It was not at all the same as the chilled liquid we’d poured originally, two hours before. Never have I experienced such a profound change in a wine over the course of a couple degrees.
Watching my son come out of his delirium had been a little like this on a much grander scale. The doctors gave him 2 milligrams of Ativan (such a tiny pill!) and suddenly, he calmed to the point where he could, once again, talk and focus and move.
"What were you thinking?" I demanded as soon as he could listen to me. "When you went out in the cold. . . .do you remember? What the hell was going through your mind?"
He tilted his head and really pondered the question. After a full minute, he spoke. "Eric Clapton’s Layla," he said soberly. "The second version — the acoustic one — not the first. That one. . . ." We’d been playing Cribbage and he glanced at his hand, as if to remind himself of the game. "I believe it might have been Eric Clapton with Derek and the Dominos. I like that version, too. But I don’t think it was in my head at all the night I got lost."
Then he put down a card for the count. And that’s how I knew the cold had receded and my son was back.
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