Iris doesn’t go to school. She couldn’t do anything there if she did. She cannot play outside. She can hardly get around inside. And so, each day, we go outside together. I pull my little Iris all around the town. (Pictured: Akiva helps.)

Crutches are difficult. Iris scoots around the house on her butt. The blocks are located right near the bathroom doorway, which is exactly where Iris builds the fancy farm, complete with silo and horse coral. It is not easy to carry blocks with a broken leg!

Still, we go out every day. Iris rides the wagon with her leg in the cast. Akiva walks or rides in the carrier. The bottom of the hill behind our house is like a skating rink, but there is no skating anymore this year.

On January 21st, 2018, I took my two children sledding down a hill that I had sledded with Akiva two days prior. The ride had been delicious: a slow, powdery descent across the slope of a field. We stopped gently at the bottom.

Two days later I invited some friends, their two similar aged kids, and Martin to re-visit the lovely slide. It was about a 45+ minute hike from the house. We dragged the kids to the top of the hill. Trusting the lovely powder, I let my children go. But it was not lovely powder. It was horrible. It was a horrible hike out, up the hill to the nearest road with Akiva bleeding from his face and Iris crying with her leg broken. Our neighbor helped me get the kids to the road. Martin ran to get the car. We drove to the emergency room.

Jack & Jill went up a hill

to fetch a pail of water.

Jack fell down & broke his crown

& Jill came tumbling after.

Iris has

the most faithful heart that ever fell in love.

Should her little heart leap into yours,

she will leave it there, for always.

Winter, winter, cold and grey.

But we can go outside to play!

When I have my brother near,

It’s as if the sun is here.

But when my brother walks away—

Winter, winter. Cold and gray.

We empty out a magic house.

There is too much. Sometimes, I think the end is coming.

We give away thousands of books. I have no judgment.

I remember ones I want to keep and I see them and there they go. There they go.

But what am I to do? Where do things belong? Where can we put them?

We give them away. Carload upon carload.

Books and things, books and things. They pass through our hands. Out the door.

Some things have been packed and saved for 40 years.

My mother remembers us, little. I think she sees us in the toys.

When we look at toys together, I become little and I feel her love surround me.

Little toys. Simple toys. Little children. Simple children.

Things with possibility. And infinite future.

Objects with potential.

If I could be anyone, I would be my mother’s child.

*    *    *

A box of colored blocks is stopped on its way out the door.

Two small children, new small hands, make new forms.

They build a rainbow pathway for themselves. A rainbow bridge.

I think it is having children that helps me let things go.

There is nothing else so magic. No object so magic as these.

Let them not pass through my hands.

Let me hold them forever.

Portrait:

Two children, their mother’s mother, their mother’s mother’s mother.

[Portrait of deceased maternal maternal great-grandfather as a young man.]

Portrait:

Mother, her two children, her mother, her mother’s mother.

[Portrait of deceased maternal grandfather as a young man.]

Portrait:

Woman.

On Christmas day, we are a family.

Iris row-row-rows the boat of Uncle Dan and Akiva in the big black chair

up and down, up and down.

Gramma (my mother, formerly known as Mom but now moved upward to a twice-exalted status)

cooks in what once was and what some day will be a lovely the kitchen.

This Christmas, again, it is an in-between kitchen, where one can admire the sub-floor,

the patterns of glue of plywood, the angles of dangling wires,

and the texture of scraped plaster.

Whatever state the kitchen, Christmas dinner tastes the same: delicious.

Papa (known as Martin by his peers) interviews his 100-year-old grandmother-in-law.

His charm is measureless and beyond words.

Gramps (once known as Dad, but now increased in rank)

washes Christmas dinner dishes at the exact same kitchen sink,

still located in the exact same place (note that!)

for the 39th year in a row.

In attendance but not pictured:

Mama (a.k.a. Jess(si[ca]) : photographer

Dinner: consumed with glee and without pause