I have cold hands, always. In the winter, I can’t touch my hands to my stomach without flinching. In the summer, friends sometimes take my hands and lay them across their face and neck like a cool cloth. My mother tells me I will be this way until menopause—something to look forward to.
I collected heating pads as a child. Not out of anything as dramatic as medical necessity, but simply because warmth is charming for one who is perpetually cold. I had the whole array—the plug-in electric, the microwavable beanbag, the hot water bottle. My particular hot water bottle was red, heart-shaped, and had grooves down the front that made a pleasant rubbery sound when strummed. I would carry it around the house like a toy tucked under my arm.
Once, when I wanted to skip school, I swallowed a mouthful of hot water and pressed the bottle to my forehead until I was hot to my mother’s touch. It was convincing—too convincing—and she wondered whether I needed to be taken to the doctor because of the unusually high reading on the thermometer. It was only at my urging that she let me get into bed and watch movies on the tiny television brought up from the kitchen.
When she brought soup to my bedside that afternoon, she commented that I didn’t seem so hot anymore and offered to take my temperature. I ran off to the bathroom for my hot water bottle, pushed the grooves against my skin, and hurried back to her to prove my illness. She puzzled over my forehead and asked what I had done to it. I can still see her face change as she recognized the striations across my face as the inverse of the bottle in a comical series of portraits. I was caught.
I don’t remember the punishment; the reel runs out before I’ve even confessed. I’d gotten my day off. That’s what I remember. I don’t remember what my hands felt like, but they were probably warm for once—from clutching the bottle and the excitement of lying. I imagine that the blood flushed outwards to my fingertips and cheeks and stayed there, at least for a little while, because sometimes the best cure is the simple pleasure of being sick.
By Katherine Damm ’13
The Harvard Advocate Blog 