7:05 a.m. (sunrise one minute earlier than yesterday). -2 degrees, wind NW 1 mph, on the cusp of a nor'easter. Sky: pot-bellied moon in the west, the tarnished remnant of a bright disc. Long clouds, gray-blue, trimmed in pink. In between, the blue light of sunrise. Permanent streams: mink tracks reduced to a trace, the evanescent thread an itinerant hunter. To be erased tonight. Wetlands: archipelagos of sweet gale, brown islands glazed by frost. Tiny crystals of frost outline alder limbs, coat sausage-shaped catkins, dangling from the end of twigs like kosher salami in Plotkin's Butcher Shop. The haunting drum roll of pileated, secure in a fortress of pine. Pond: the illusion of invariability. Fools me . . . again and again.
Tufted titmouse whistles abridged song, two loud notes, peter, peter. Less musical, more robust than a chickadee, who sings nearby. Birds seemingly in sync with the Gregorian calendar. High in the west, croaking beneath the weight of barometric changes, raven lampoons the sunny morning . . . and anything to do with calendars. He feels the pressure of what moves up the coast.
Two weeks ago, Ginger called. She wanted Becky and Casey's address. Their baby's due in five weeks, and she had a gift to send them. When the gift arrived, Becky called me, nearly in tears. A wool baby-sweater Linny began in the late nineteen-nineties. Sickness and death kept her from finishing, which she had given half-done to a pregnant friend. Stored unfinished for twenty-three years, the sweater was given to Ginger, who traded a neighbor soup to finish the knitting.
Two more chickadees whistle, high and sweet, sensing what lies beyond the nor-easter. Feeling the bright light of the future. And, an unfinished circle completed, a grandmother unknowingly gifts her own grandchild.
A tiny sweater with the longest red thread ...took my breath away...
What a wonderful gift of time and love--and this story will become part of the new baby's life, a memory of Linny and Ginger and the power of friendship. Twenty-three years--now complete.