School day. We all get an A+ getting him out the door. A pancake morning. Brittany gets to go with my daughter for the ride. I must take the compost to the bins behind the garden. It’s remarkably cold. But I stop at the brook because it’s very lovely this morning. Then, a swim. I meet with my Ukrainian friends online. We are a small, intimate group this morning, our first meeting after the holidays in the new year. I prep for my free writing webinar tonight. In the afternoon, Perri warns me to dress warmly. I am picking Wave up from school for her and she believes he is going to want to take a walk. And she is right. He wants to walk through the school parking lot and go on an adventure in the industrial area. This is something he has done with her. I wish I could talk him out of it, but no. Fortunately we are both dressed warmly. He wants to climb a hill. He wants me to follow him with my eyes closed. He wants to take me to where he has played with his mother, presumably in warmer weather. The wind chill is pretty harsh. Doesn’t bother him. We are at the top of the hill near some granite stones and shrubs. Our task is to play hide and seek. In the cold cold cold. It’s actually pretty fun. And very cold. We each get to hide and seek four times and then I manage to get him to kick a hunk of frozen snow with me back down the hill to the car. To the heat on high. To the heat on highest. And then a drive home with a story. He wants the story about the ducks. The mallards. I tell Make Way for Ducklings the way its written except the mallards choose our brook on the Charles River to live on. Then we are home. Tonight my workshop is pretty amazing. The writing shared is so moving. Tenderness is the them. Thanks to The Gift by Li-Young Lee.

To pull the metal splinter from my palm

my father recited a story in a low voice.

I watched his lovely face and not the blade.

Before the story ended, he’d removed

the iron sliver I thought I’d die from.