Snow music

The snow here is not deep—six inches, perhaps?—but the wind has carved and smoothed it into knife-edged drifts, mini mountain ranges of white. I shoveled this afternoon, and it was like scooping nothing, carrying nothing, depositing nothing in a wind-scattered pile. K. and I slogged through it tonight, faces to the wind, walking to the impromptu contra dance I'd been invited to play at.

It was in the old gym, and we had to mark the sprung nails in the floor with chairs. There were about twenty dancers, and four or five of us playing at any given time: piano, accordian, fiddle, banjo (sometimes), and me on guitar. We sounded good; I've had good luck here with pick-up bands, good enough that one of the dancers asked us if we'd played together before. I tried my egg-shaker for the first time while I played, and it met with approval; bandleader Naomi said it was a neat trick, and K. claimed it really lifted the dancers.

Something cool happened for the first time tonight. Some of you may know that I've had trouble participating in jams for the last ten years or so, because I wasn't able to pick up the chords by ear, or if I could I didn't have confidence in my choices. Tonight, we were playing a tune the banjo player suggested, one for which we had no sheet music, and I got a pretty good handle on the chords early on. Halfway through the first repetition Naomi asked, "Do you have the chords?" When I said I did, she said, "Do you want to help the piano and accordian?" And I did.

So: not only did I figure out the correct chords, but I was able to help other musicians pick them up. Not that they were particularly complicated—G-C-D, in a standard pattern—but it's another rung I've set my foot upon. It's nice...it's nice to feel a little impressive, I guess, after so long feeling like an appendix.

I got tired and a little sloppy after a couple of hours, but we finished well, with a kick-ass reel set in Em and E. I chatted with Naomi and the accordianist (who is performing a 13th-century liturgical chant in Boston and Cleveland as his winter term project), and with K. and one of her students, and with a friendly librarian (who told me library gossip, how lovely!). Slowly, slowly, I am meeting people.

‡

Yesterday I went for a walk in the snow, down along the edge of the frozen reservoir. There is a little raised stone tower overlooking it, and I saw footprints going up the stairs, across the top, and to the edge—and stop. It wouldn't be a nasty jump, but I didn't see an impact crater below; I was pleasantly puzzled, there in the sun and the snow. (I theorize now that whoever it was circled back around on the parapet.) 3/4 of the way around the reservoir, I cut through the woods, where I met a woman with a large, friendly dog; she asked me if I was William's brother, which I am not. Beyond the woods I found a pristinely white meadow, dotted with trees and crossed with squirrel-tracks, and beyond the meadow I found a graveyard. There was a new grave there, heaped with dirt, with still-fresh flowers atop it, but I didn't see a soul; I must have just missed the funeral.

I walked back to Professor St. on the bike path, slightly lost, alone in a quiet universe. As I was leaving the graveyard, I saw a little white cherub sitting on the snow, as though he'd landed for a moment and frozen solid.

Toppled

My grandfather died last night.

He was 92. He went without pain, and he went before he lost his mental or physical faculties (save his sight); he fainted while a nurse was helping him to the bathroom, and he never woke up.

He was a locomotive of a man, and please underline the "loco". He feuded bitterly with his nursing home administrator, whom he called "der Führer". He once left a long angry complaint on the back of a restaurant placemat, then realized he'd forgotten his hat—and, completely unabashed, went back in to get it. He was a teacher and a tireless promoter of the YMCA, and he made his own root beer, and he was tickled silly when some combination of coupons would allow him to get a can of nuts for twelve cents.

We had an antagonistic relationship sometimes—he didn't approve of my hair, he wanted K. and I to stop living in however much sin we're living in, he was a staunch Republican—but he loved me and I loved him. There was a lot to admire in him, blended inextricably, alloyed, with the exasperations. I didn't think anything would ever stop him. I am glad, in a way, that he died before he faded; I can remember him upright and grinning and declaiming, still with granite in his bones.

But I wish he could've lived to see my wedding. That would have made him happy.

Rest in peace, Grandpop. I hope heaven has a complaint box.


Edwin T. Thorpe II
1912 - 2005