Mote of an Idea
Hi dad how was work I think you're
going to need to bring 32 cupcakes instead of 31 because today was
Dante's birthday and I told him I would bring him an extra one. Even
though he did not invite me to his birthday but it's okay because I
don't like birthday parties anyway.
Sometimes, I think
I can tell when people are genuinely writing a child's dialogue.
There are hardly any commas in a day of the life of a nine-year-old.
I will bring as many cupcakes as you
need. And two for Dante. If my
daughter wants to take the high road before she's even got her
learner's permit, I'm happy to chalk it up to excellence in
parenting.
She coughs.
You have a cold?
We went to White
Pass over the weekend, on a whim. I had been out til 3 am the night
before playing cards. Two of the women from across the table flicked
sunflower seeds at me, until one hit my suprasternal notch and slid down
my shirt. The woman to my right told me that I resembled someone, but
only from the side, and that being totally honest, she considered her
husband to be the best looking man she knew. He is a good looking
guy, I agreed. The headache from the cigarette smoke and group
shots of cinnamon whiskey had strapped me to the board and was slowly
tightening the bindings. I have to go, I'm sorry. Great party.
Icicles. The eaves
of the ski lodge menaced us with giant icicles hanging from the roof.
I remember these growing up in New York. Are they dangerous?
No.
They look like
spears. What if they fall?
They will melt
away from the outside in. The core of the ice is still cold. The
weeping tears keep it colder, just like sweat, haven't you listened
in class? The core is always colder than the crust.
Those were days
when I had to put up walls, though. Walls work when you are alone.
But a wall is a poor barrier against a friend. They ignore the
warnings and climb over or knock incessantly until madness drives you
to raise the portcullis.
On the hill I fell
hard, so hard that I grabbed my side in pain and felt something hard.
It was my phone. I pulled it out and saw that I had broken it
somehow. The lower left side of the screen no longer works. There are
letters and numbers I will have to forgo and live without. I have let
loose letters before, pulled them from hidden places and feared
reading words I did not deserve. Words never read are far sadder than
letters never sent.
After that it was
falling leaf the rest of the day, holding my abdomen and
making a controlled descent from one side of the mountain to the
other. It is such a peaceful, pretty way to write your pain into the
snow, that, or garlands.
Those icicles do
fall, however. I wish we could witness that first time a person saw
one. There would have been two firsts. The one, later, would have
known the icicle as a threat, well before the invention of words,
perhaps hanging over the mouth of a cave. The other, even longer ago,
before wooden spears and pointed flint, maybe hanging from the
branches of a pine. It would have been in the early morning light,
after a long day's travel. It would have collected the sun's rays and
turned them into tears.
I should not be
surprised I broke yet another phone. Building silence around a wall
is more effective than a moat.
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