Tagged: offspring

Martin told me I looked like a toddler today. It was because I was kicking snow and hollering “take that!” at it. It’s melting, but there’s so much of it, it’s taking forever. And it’s melting from underneath in places so that it’s hanging in lacy little ledges, tempting little wedges of rotten, diamond-bright, icy snow. If you kick it just right, with a roundhouse sort of swing to your leg, it sprays up and out in a glittering arc. Ha ha! Take that, snow! Your time is UP! He did clarify that I would look more like a toddler...

Walking through an early winter evening, with the shine of the streetlights on the wet pavement, there’s a strange sense of peace that envelops you just as surely as the scarf you have wrapped around your head. It wasn’t cold enough to wear mittens; I let my hands dangle inside my big warm sleeves. The scarf was more for surety, a precaution against cold in the throat. It wasn’t even cold enough for dragon breath, but it was dark as the inside of a dragon’s cave and damp like it too. Looking up, I could see stars, not stalactites. No...

My kids are waltzing, or what passes for waltzing in their pre-adolescent, high-school-musical-filled brains, in the living room. They’re singing as they twirl, and as they pass the doorway they both make a huge grin in my direction and then stop and come in to see what I’m doing. AAH! they exclaim, when they see that I’m writing about them (they’re sitting here giggling right now). Their cheeks are bright pink, and their skin is cold: they were out in the chilly evening air watering the garden …and each other… a few minutes ago. I kept thinking it would rain,...