Late afternoon in Vermont December is twilight; I’m hustling along my road, a glass container of hot soup wrapped in a pink cloth in my hands, and I stop for a moment and talk to the neighbor boys who are sledding. The light is dim enough that I squint to count the three children, shadowy figures in snowsuits. The cold is fierce on my face. This day has been sprint from one thing to another, more yet to come, but I pause, that glass steaming in my mittens, the sunset sprawling over the great sky, the stars already emerging in the east’s darkness. A small moment, a tiny exchange of hellos. Such luck to be in this ordinary afternoon.

I walk through the parting in the lilacs-gone-to-sticks for the winter, study the bird feeder hung in the mock orange, the seeds sprinkled in the new snow. Behind me, the boys call to each other. In their lit kitchen window, I see the boys’ parents. Dinnertime nears. The cold is so mighty a body without shelter could and would perish. In the snow that gleams with the last of the day’s light, my boot prints lead to me, my lit window and cat, the upstairs bedroom dark where I stood a year ago and wondered if I would die. Wrong question. Not if but when. For this moment, however (a great big however), I remain in this simple-not-simple equation of laughing children, hot soup, the night swooping in. I study my bootprints with satisfaction and then head towards my own kitchen door.

“The Way It Is”

There’s a thread you follow. It goes among
things that change. But it doesn’t change.
People wonder about what you are pursuing.
You have to explain about the thread.
But it is hard for others to see.
While you hold it you can’t get lost.
Tragedies happen; people get hurt
or die; and you suffer and get old.
Nothing you do can stop time’s unfolding.
You don’t ever let go of the thread. ~ William Stafford