It’s -12 degrees. The dawn is washing gray over the black and white, snow and ice world. I’m getting ready to go to work, not carrying my grandson around while I make my morning coffee, then cradling him in my bent-knee lap so he can move his head and arms and legs around, whirling the world into view, into his mind, into his churn of newness and marvel and plain figuring-it-all-out. Like most babies, he moves his head to look at light and lifts his face to let the morning through the window fill his eyes. I look out the window most mornings myself, I get up and raise the shades and see what’s what. Today I see frigid air and snow still clumped on the miniature blue spruce. It’s too cold to make the long walk out to the paper tube, long because the path across the front yard isn’t shoveled and getting to the paper means walking out the driveway, across the road in front of the house, down the road to the side of the house. There’s a five foot wall of plowed snow between the house and the newspaper. I’ll get the news soon enough today. I’m going to work, and there’s no baby in my lap.
Grace Mattern 