Last winter started out really bad. The Buffalo Bills went to their first Super Bowl and lost to the New York Giants. For Valentine’s Day, Margaret Trafalcanti took me into the coat closet at school and let me kiss her on the lips and the throat and put my hand on her hip, but then she didn’t talk to me for the rest of the year. Also in February an owl nested in the tall white pine in my backyard for about a week, but then a bunch of crows, which I later found out is called a “murder,” chased it away. They heckled that owl for days, and one night at dusk there were just too many of them diving at the owl, one after another, and the owl headed out toward the river, and I never saw it again.