Occasionally, I slip upstairs to sleep after my husband dozes and the snoring starts. (A sleep study is on the calendar, and relief may be in sight, I hope!) Anyway, last night was one of those nights.

The quiet bedroom I escape to is just at the top of the stairs. We had a nice toasty fire going in the fireplace last night and heat had drifted up to warm the entire second floor. In fact it was as warm, if not warmer, than the downstairs rooms when I went up.

Not so when I awoke this morning. The heat was off, so I woke up cold. Fingers that were sticking out from under the covers were numb and I couldn't feel my nose. I lay there wondering if the heating system had failed entirely, or if it just gotten so cold out that the heat pump was no longer performing efficiently.

Neither scenario fit.

I have not wakened so cold since I was a kid. I snuggled deep, quickly bringing my numb fingers out twice to slap the snooze button. Finally, I knew I had to crawl out and face the music. I went down the stairs to heavenly warmth and realized I had turned the heat switch off on the upstairs thermostat a couple of weeks ago, during the balmy 70s, and forgotten to turn it back on. When I went to bed I had closed the door, cutting off all the rising heat from downstairs that had been keeping the area comfortable.

Not the heat pump, just the controller this time. Now, an hour later, I am still wrapped tightly in my PJs and a heavy robe, pecking away at what sounds like meaningless dribble.

Not so. As I shivered earlier, my heart was flooded with warm memories of childhood and snuggling under the covers with my sister in houses where cold air ruled until Daddy or one of my brothers got a fire started in the fireplace.

You'll never see me marching for women's equal rights when it comes to building a fire on a cold morning. I appreciate the men in my life, and I like to have my doors opened for me, and lots of cool stuff that a few narrow-minded feminists decided didn't matter to me.

So, I'm shivering this morning and remembering. I don't know when the memories became so sweet. For many years they were sprinkled with embarrassment and insecurity and a tad of sadness. No more.

Somewhere along the way I came into my own. I learned to like me, really like me, a lot. And when I did, I realized that everything that ever happened to me made me who I am today. Everything I ever had to do without. Every hand-me-down. Every cold morning. Every - everything. And I wouldn't trade my past history for anything.

I will never forget spending the day with a Russian physician back in the early `90s. She was about my age and here in the states on some kind of medical exchange program. The day was awesome with lots of modern day cultural dialogue. Food and drink. She drove Daniel's tractor at the time, the little orange Kubota, and was unbelievably proud of herself. Heaven only knows how much she'd enjoy his new John Deere!

It was such a cool day. And then I asked her to tell me about herself. She was confused. She tried to talk about her medical training and her daily duties as a physician and the cultural wealth of her native land.

“No,” I said to her, “that's not what I want to hear. I want to know about you, your childhood, your teen years, your marriage... you.”

“My history? MY history... no one has ever asked about me, wanted to know MY history before.”

You would have had to have been there. I don't know if she was just trying to accommodate her American host, or if I pulled the plug on a fountain that had needed to erupt for a lifetime. Her native St. Petersburg came to light the way no history book could ever have revealed it to me. I'm not even sure a visit could allow such vision.

After a while she began to share with me intimate details of her. No, you'll never read about what she said to me in this column or anywhere else. Some words spoken and heard should be held forever in an eternal capsule of time belonging only to the moment which produced them.

But, some of the memories we think we need to shove back and keep hidden on the other side of yesterday have a way of finding their rightful place in today. Today is a good day. This present moment is a good moment, though I wish I could have snuggled longer

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