6:28 a.m. (sunrise one minute earlier than yesterday). 21 (frigid) degrees, wind NNW 11 mph. Sky: overcast, peach light in the east inspires the gray bank, everywhere else congested and gloomy. Snow squalls, big flakes stick to everything: my hat; the dogs, the ground; rough-barked trees. Birds keep their own council, advertising reduced to a bare minimum, primarily crows and jays, whose strident screams accompany me down the frozen furrows of the road. (AKA: tailpipe reduction and muffler compression zone.) Permanent streams: upper, cold drafts of air trace water downhill and into the marsh. Nearby, robin rattles in pine, a lonesome, troubling call . . . the sound of disorientation. Lower, if I wasn't so cold, I'd linger and listen. Wetlands: driving snow, a screen of white overwhelming a troubled sky. Ice plugs open water, no room for ducks, which loiter in a more dependable current. Out of the squall, a pileated salvo, one and done. For a moment, I'm invigorated. Dogs, ever respectful, sit and wait beneath headdresses of snow. Pond: yesterday's open water, today's veneer of ice. Mostly snow-dusted, a few clear panes too thin to prop a premise.
Two chickadees duel, a battle of whistles from opposite sides of the road. Crow by the compost pile, a knocking call, the banging of sticks, a drummer without a drum, awash in the memory of stale bread. In two months, fledglings will join parents at the compost, a crow-fest, the knowledge of stall bread passing from one generation to the next—the foundation of storytelling.
I remember, too, your idiosyncrasies. How you’d forget your breakfast while checking in on everyone else. The smell of burnt toast, black plumes rising through the seams of the toaster oven. How you once smuggled charred popcorn into the movies. Our row smelled like an electrical fire, and the theater had to be evacuated. You were embarrassed and couldn’t stop laughing, and everyone got a free ticket. I'll tell your granddaughter all the stories. But who'll curate our collection when I forget, memories that fade like tanagers into the green leaves of summer?
Good Lord Ted, that last paragraph is beautiful. It grabs the heart and mind. You are your family's storyteller, and Isabelle will carry it on.
Thanks - as always, Ted. LOVE the last paragraph story - beautiful and heartbreaking and funny remembrance with a hint of future loss and possible renewal, immortality even - as tanagers.