Soaking in Winter with Old Friends

Soaking in Winter original illustration by Becky Kazana. Email me to purchase. Do not reproduce without permission. 

A few weeks back, Prem invited us for roll your own sushi night- we had fun making rice, chopping fish, frying tempura, making a huge mess in the kitchen and getting full of tastes of this and that long before we ever sat down at the table to eat properly.

Afterwards, we went out into the moonlit snow, bravely stripped down to our swimsuits in the freezing air and climbed into the steaming hot tub.We four sat there talking about nothing, huddled close together, knees and feet bumping into each other from time to time in a kind of intimacy that is rare in my life here. It comes in part from having grown up together, then watching each other's lives unfold from afar. I know and love these people, and have for a long time.

The tub overlooks a pond on a golf course, frozen solid, lined with bare trees silhouetted against the clouded sky, perfectly still. For a moment, the moon passed out from under the clouds, glowing white, round and huge through the veils of cloud and we all looked up at it in silence. There was the gurgling of the water around us, the crackle and ping of the ice, the gentle flutter of the snow settling over the ground and steam rising up around our faces, turned up towards the sky.