The Rough & Tumble

We are exiting the winter season, and it's hard. Winter is one of my favorites, in the same way that the key of D minor is my favorite. I relish the quiet, the melancholy, the deep sense of waiting for what might be, and what can no longer be ever again. On our regular path through the woods that we walk every day with the dogs, what used to be a portal of snow and ice with only blotches of pine green is reduced to a thick mud, a few last sheets of ice, and a stubble of last year's leaves...

The snow is slipping from our house, coming in big, sonic boom crashes from one roof to the next that wakes us up with a start several times a night. All of the icicles that have steadily grown in the full blown Yeti claws are angled like arrows toward a target in the woods, hanging on tenuously til the snow behind it gives way and they slide treacherously to the ground. It's raining like it's April in December, and we are mourning the stunning, glittery blanket of snow that is giving way to...

Two years ago July, my (Mallory) person-- a man who stepped in for me two decades before and insisted on being a father, a friend, and a...