Our yard, this week, has been testament to the passage of all sorts of critters. Some of them hop, some stroll, some drag their bellies or tails. Some don’t leave tracks where you can see them, preferring to tunnel along under the surface of the snow. Some wander here and there. Others tramp along on favorite routes until their paths look like little highways.
The snow has also featured fault lines that give expanses of snow the look of having been assembled in sections. The overall effect is of tectonic plates, shifting imperceptively. You almost expect to hear muffled moans from under the whiteness. Elsewhere around the neighborhood, some small child has been experimenting with making curlicue tracks, which go nowhere with great charm. If you could muster enough curlicuers, they could turn parks and yards into designs reminiscent of English gardens and Versailles.
As of last Sunday, skaters were still busy on Thurston Pond, out on the hockey rinks folks have shoveled and gliding along the paths winding between them and around the edges of the pond. A fellow of about five, out hockeying with his dad, particularly caught my eye as I walked past with the dog. The child was having a wonderful time, and so was the dad.
We’ve had some higher temperatures since then. Now, the paths look like rivers meandering around the surface of the ice. They’re not wet yet, just dark without snow cover. There are actual bits of open water on Traver Creek. Mallards were swimming in one of them, as Rascal and I walked by, when one of the ducks called out to his friends, “Hey, guys, check this out!” Then he busted into the Funky Chicken, with exuberant wing and neck action. He deserved a quacky round of applause.
The portions of the Huron River visible from Huron Parkway show more open water every time we cross the bridge. What made a recent drive that way memorable, though, was the new snow falling at the time. The flakes were big enough to occasion comment, some of them an inch-and-a-half to two inches across. Then they got bigger still.
By the time we reached our destination on the south side of town, they were about the biggest we’d ever seen, running three and four inches across. They were a marvel. It was easy to track the flight paths of individual flakes as they streamed up and over moving vehicles, or fell straight down when traffic was still.
The subject of conversation in French class last Friday was whether we would rather travel into the past to meet our ancestors or into the future to meet our grandchildren’s children. Everyone chose the past.
I would like to meet my parents-in-law when they were young. I’d like to see my husband’s father in the full glory of his athleticism. I’d like to see that handsome man dancing with that beautiful women, when they were young and moved with ease. I asked them once if they’d ever cleared the dance floor, and they grinned and nodded. I’d like to be one of the other dancers, stepping aside just to watch the golden couple glide by, full of grace and love.
I’d like to spend time with my dad’s uncle Charley. The family’s houses, generations later, are full of his oils and pastels. But the art is all I know of the man. It is enough, but I’d like to know more.
I’d like to know my mom’s father as a boy and young man. How did he cope with the death of his mother when he was just a boy? How did he gather up the courage to emigrate from French Canada to the United States? When and how did he learn to speak English? How did he become such a good skater? Where did he learn? Was there a time in his life when he was carefree?
The same question for Dad’s mother, who immigrated from England. What was it like to leave all you knew behind? To further your education in a new country? To pursue a career and start your own highly responsible business at a time when it was so much less usual for a woman to do that? And where and from whom did you learn to fly fish?
Dad’s father came here from Ireland. How did he gain his skills as a draftsman? What was it like for him and his young family during the Great Depression?
There are so many questions, so many people to know. For some, all we have are names, not even relationships. Wouldn’t it be wonderful to meet them?
28 February 2025