farenheit

when my husband told me this afternoon that there might be a job for us in small town nevada, i put on my coat and boots and took a walk in the spring blizzard. i got to the corner of mayfield and murray hill and stood pretending to wait for the 9X express.

i faced the wind and let the snow hit my cheeks, let it make my nose run, let it tickle my fingertips. i smelled the warm burst of hot dogs, the sizzle of garlic roasting in every italian restaurant up and down the street, the sweet warmth of cassata cake puffing in an industrial oven.

i watched a woman walk into la barberia di laura holding a pack of smokes and a bar of chocolate and walk out again a few seconds later holding only one smoldering cigarette. i watched students wearing sweats and scarves hurry to mama santa's and duck inside the double wooden doors, shivering.

would all of this smell the same, look the same if cleveland scorched in a bath of sun year round? would i be as relieved to pull open the door of corbo's bakery and hide myself in a white paper bag of cannoli and butter cookies if it was always warm enough to wade in lake erie? if a rose could bloom at 122 degrees farenheit, would it smell as sweet as the first taste of spring and mud and rain after months of deep icy clouds?

erosion

i am losing my hair. it comes out in long clumps, the strands wrapping around my hand and fingers. it sticks to the shower curtain. it nests in tiny piles in the corners of the bathroom. it threads its way through my husband's underwear: i find it as i fold the laundry and pull and pull the strand until it comes loose and floats away. it catches itself in the crevices of my son's neck. it turns up in the bread dough, the cracks in the keyboard, the toes of my socks, the soup, the pages of anna karenina. i find it underneath my pillow, long strands curled and waiting for who knows what -- easter bunny, tooth fairy, santa claus, a postpartum godmother?

it feels like erosion. my goddess body of motherhood [the curves, the thick rope of hair, the puffy ankles, the shining eyes] is disappearing: a mountain of sand caught in the fury of a spring rain. i am left a shuddering pile of pebbles, weary and missing sleep.

should i collect the hair, coaxing it from between my toes and underneath the couch cushions, into my lap? will i need a reminder of the way my body expanded as wide as the universe? will i forget the moment i first felt my son leap, somewhere between my navel and my hip? will it be buried in my own strata of memory?

she will deny this

i remember an afternoon digging through my mother's old things [frayed scrapbooks, reams of paper, bits of photographs] and finding a notecard with a few lines of ee cummings written in ballpoint pen.

though i have closed myself as fingers,
you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens
(touching skilfully,mysteriously) her first rose

i didn't know it was ee cummings then, i only reeled back with shocked delight, sucking in air. my mother! poetry! and a stanza as sultry and velvet as this one! i copied the lines down into my own notebook, keeping them, reading them at night after everyone was asleep.

this is how spring should feel: a close secret, a delight, a petal by petal moment that reveals just a little more beauty, a little more color until the whole world is alive and gasping for breath.

this is how spring should feel. but i'm in cleveland. and it's april. and it's snowing hard bitter pellets: the snow of february, not even the wet snow of spring.