Passing of Time

It's hard to write here. It's hard to think clearly, even. In spite of the pervasiveness of the figures of my present--husband, children, dogs--when I am up late at night by myself in this house, the only one awake in the household, the years run together, are fluid, and I might as well be eighteen, twenty, twelve.

A little while ago I took the dogs outside. It is much warmer than it has been, but it was still cold--the best kind of cold, in which an inhaled breath feels clean and your hands don't freeze without gloves. I walked across the patio, down the stone steps and onto the driveway, covered with sand over ice.  I found myself thinking about how when you grow up walking on ice, you know how to walk on ice, don't fall. And then, as the dogs romped in the snow, I looked up.

The sky was black and lit up with stars, framed by the trees, the same trees that have framed the same stars for as long as my parents have lived in this house. That patch of sky, the same patch gazed up at all those summer afternoons I lay on the lawn, the same patch taken in on so many other winter nights.

And I just stood there, letting the dogs prance in the cold, clean air, looking up, looking at the stars, thinking about my grandmother, who is now just 93, and about this house, and how it never changes, and about how I do and don't, and about the way it feels to be the right kind of cold alone, outdoors, on a clear winter night.