Chicken Soup for A Winter's Day

Today I look at winter with older and perhaps (just perhaps) wiser eyes.  But let's face it, I've experienced sixty winters already and I think that I've experienced most of what nature can throw at us when the sun is pointing more directly south of the equator.  Now when I was young, winter held no terrors for me or my sisters.  One time we went to the side of the overpass by McKinley Park on Chicago's southwest side.  It was the best hill around for using our sled.  We spent hours there and we were just a bit chilly when it was time to go home.  We started the long trek, about two and a quarter miles as the crow flies, but then again we were not crows.  We walked and walked and got colder and colder.  Now, I was the big brother and my sisters were really in bad shape.  In my pocket I was carrying a fortune, almost a whole dollar that I had saved up. We were about half way home when I knew Janice and Sandy could not go another step.  Then it hit me.  I had to do something.  On the corner was a greasy spoon sort of diner where the bus drivers would stop and get lunch or coffee or a coke or what have you.  I brought my sisters to into the place we went and sat at the counter and I ordered a bowl of chicken noodle soup and three spoons.  The three of us sat there and shared the soup and warmed up so we could make it the rest of the way home.  The sight of three kids sharing a bowl of soup for some reason caused smiles to appear on all of the other patrons of the restaurant, at the time I wondered why.