January — bone-brittle cold.
Another year has gone by, one of many in which I did not get a Christmas card or any kind of howdy-do from Jane.
We have been through a lot together, Jane and me. But Jane is not at all good about answering letters. She did not even write back when I told her my father died last year.
I was my father’s light, and he was always so proud of me. When I was little, he and I would lie in bed and count until the numbers were so large they could no longer fit in our heads. We recited poems about dark birds and made up songs about our heroic, badass tomcat slipping through the sun and rain. We would sing, “He is great / Like a snake / Waiting for his prey.” And my father would sing to me, “Little Nora, / Little Nora, / Oh, what a pretty girls her is,” the bad grammar making the song all the more precious.
