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.