Girandole

Roads frozen, and the wind chill like iron tongson our temples during our brief stints outsidefor the dogs to relieve themselves, to give ourselves a chanceto make the house feel welcome again, returning.Huddled against snow for three days, homebound:think of Bob Dylan, Billie Holiday, and the snowmanfrom Frozen all vying for the microphone,and you’re thinking of the soundtrack of our house.

Even my wife, the only person in the worldI cannot exceed in love for our daughter,confessed as she wrestled her boots, balancingon one wet sock in a snowmelt puddle after findingthe snow too cold and granular to meldinto a snowman, a desire, sometimes, to let goof being a parent. By which she also meant,but had the sense not to say aloud, a spouse.

And yet it was wonderful, having only ourselvesto bother us, school and jobs canceled, to cultivatethe resource of the body’s own warmth.Sometimes feeling crusty, at others stealing kisses.Hours reading to the child on the big bedwith a couple of snoozing dogs, and the kitchenfragrant with baking bread, the breathof steam harbored under crisping crust.

And the outdoors, seen from inside: a windowscape,hung with the brittle glint of icicles,the kind of snow that seems to cherish each windowsill, weed stalk, twig, and flowerpot;and the ground smoothed in snow, so thatwhen the birds appeared in their small flocks,even in their winter drab, they seemedlike colored beads on a field of white cloth.

As they did, before the window late on that third day.Behind me, my daughter gazed into the windowof a Kindle. Turning to her, I looked forthe smaller child she once was, somehow vanished intoher lengthening limbs. I wanted to write about that:about the snow, goldfinches on the sill and the first glintof crocus emerging from their winter feathers;and a word, a name for a kind of candelabra the snow

clinging to the oak twigs reminds me of; an old,obsolete word for a shape of light—it’s also a namefor a kind of fireworks—a form that brilliance takes.I wanted time alone, to have that favorite time—hoveringdusk, windowlight giving over to lamplight—to collect that light in a glass of wine,a notebook turned to an empty page; to waitfor a word to emerge from memory.

And here it is now—girandole—a week later,given that space and solitude I craved. But look, too,how these lines turn back to the house,and my beloved inmates (as Coleridge calledhis wife and child, writing in a snowbound cottage).Ten more minutes, I told my daughter,and we’ll have to leave our windows; timeto begin to get our dinner made.