Snow abounds, still, and behaves as if it will never melt, just crisp over, turn grey, freeze again and again until it is the density and hardness of glass. I hear it creak at night. Sometimes it whomps down from the roof and huffs solidly into itself, heavier than it was moments ago. We wait for the morning to shovel it clear again from the milk man’s walk. The dog will tramp a trail again, leaping – a joyful dolphin without water. The rabbits will nudge down deep searching for grass.
Old and set snow piles are pushed by boys, wives, cars and plows. A girl and her father shovel a neighbor’s walk. I have not seen a fox or a deer in weeks, though I know they hover at night, snorting, hot puffs of air gathering around their heads. They take off as the cars of the teenagers turn up the driveways late, as the timers on the Christmas clocks click the blinking lights out for the night, before dawn, in the ice clear air.
I find jingle leftovers and leavings of people in the corners of my house. Even though everyone’s gone home, their lingerings remain. Something hangs in the air, faint and still, like the breathing of people I love. Their collective air seems to rise – a soft, salty, fog surrounding me.
We pick up and put away. We buy new calendars, set appointments, reshelf what’s underfoot.
In the laundry room, I find one or another snow glove of one or another young boy pushed back under the mud room table, soggy, damp, clutched closed and caked with twigs. I find red wool socks I don’t recognize, a snow fort flag, candy cane bits. I find happy notes from teachers written weeks ago, as school let out, as children ran wildly into the loop-de-loo of the-week-before-Christmas. I find lists of things to mail, the stamps I lost, a block lettered reminder to buy husks for the tamales.
In my office, my father’s notes abound – on scraps of paper, index cards, the sticky pad shaped like a star. He writes in full sentences; his jots and scribblings begin and end – never trail off undone, straggly, half thought. He has left passwords and email addresses dotting my desk like confetti. When I open the hall closet, I think I see his hat, his camera. Of course he took both home. Of course they are gone.
My mother is a different story. I find her when I move a pillow, open a drawer, settle my big coat on my shoulders. She leaves a scent – sweet like cooked cinnamon or week-old flowers. It is the lotion she rubs into her hands in this cold, dry place. I can hear her rings tinking back and forth against each other on the bones of her thin fingers as if she is still standing at my counter, in my kitchen, rubbing her hands soft.
My children say “you smell like Grandma” when I use the lotion then bend to tuck them away for the night, pull their sheets up to their chins, my palm grazing their heads, tugging their hair over the pillow in the ageless hand sweep of mothers putting children down for the night. “You smell like Grandma,” they say again and grab my wrist, turn their necks and tuck down around my arm for a moment, breathing her in, pinning me still until they are done and she is all around them as they fall asleep.
It is a good thing, this missing, this wistfulness – it gets us through, until next time around.
We get up and step out each morning. Our life unfolds again like a soft towel in front of us. Over and over the days start, utilitarian, useful, crisp. Another one will be here tomorrow – after a night of deer in the cold yards, of birds huddled in the leggy trees, of prayers lingering low over the pines, hopeful and heard.
