Well before the first hint of dawn, I listen to the sounds our house makes in the night.  The whirring of an overhead fan.  The purring of a portable air purifier.  And just barely audible, radio voices on KBIA, programmed to connect us automatically at 5:30 a.m. to NPR and the world. Click. The thermostat register in the hallway checking its own temperature, set at 65 degrees for the night.  Clink. Ice dropping onto a pile of cubes in the refrigerator’s freezer bin.

by Cathy Salter

Then one more sound catches my attention.  Unfamiliar, it’s curious enough to have me leave the warmth of our down comforter, wool top blanket and Kit to find its source.  But first, I slip my bare feet into chocolate-colored high topped, fleece-lined Ugg boots—replacements for my old pair purchased in New Zealand several decades before the fashion world decided that these wooly boots from Down Under were in fact not so ugg-ly after all. 

Ignoring traditional house robes, I opt for a warm, oatmeal-colored, oversized sweater that almost reaches my knees and add a sleeveless fleece-lined vest the color of Burmese garnets.  Catching my image in the glass porch door, my white pajama pants float beneath the sweater and vest like the traditional Pakistani shalwar kameez.  For an instant, I see my beautiful sisters Molly and Kim in the late 1970s.  Dressed in traditional pajama-like pants and long tops, they are wrapped in cashmere pashmina shawls as a cold dawn rises over the ancient city of Gabedero in Sindh Province, Pakistan.

~ Read more in today’s Journal ~