And Sometimes When We Touch

The honesty's too much. So I have to close my eyes and hide. I wanna hold you till I die. Till we both break down and cry. I want to hold you till the feeling subsides.

This, at 44, is how I remember the words to that old 1978 chestnut by Dan Hill, whoever he is (where are they now?)

This time of year, the softening of winter, the pastel-colored late afternoons that just weeks ago were iron cold black, brings me into a good wistful state of mind. The coming of lent. The notion of sin and redemption. The lest thoughtful among us will say, "February, you know we're gonna get hit with a cold snap." Yes, I know, but look at the sky. Watch how the sunset moves northward each day. Behind this tree today and that barn tomorrow. Watch for the signs. Early. And think of the coming rebirth of nature's living face. I will stop here but have a cycle of stories in mind.

Memories light the corners of my cranium

In case you haven't noticed, the days fall in 2006 exactly as they did in 1978. For example, today is Friday Feb. 3. Now on the corresponding Friday 28 years ago, my parents were gone away for the weekend to make Marriage Encounter. I was 16 and charged with watching my younger brothers, who were 13 and 8. It wasn't particularly cold, but I remember lying on the sofa, listening to "Night Fever" and "Samantha Sang." This was when Saturday Night Fever was out. We had made plans for me and my girlfriend at the time, L. to go shopping at the local mall, called "Shoppers' World. We took the Green Line bus which even back then was a decrepit and seldom used mode of transportation in what was mainly an upper blue collar to middle white collar kind of place. When we arrived at the mall, we'd go through a department store called Jordan Marsh, and at one point we had stopped at a lunch counter, after rising from which, one of us managed to push my little brother into an oncoming woman, right up against her winter coat. That was the highlight of the whole day for him. If we weren't incommunicado, I'm sure he'd remember it still. We went to a movie, Mel Brooks' High Anxiety. Good for a few laughs. Tired. Waiting around. Her dad came to pick me, my girlfriend L., and my little brother B. He drove us back in what must have been the ur-model of SUV's in the 1970's, the Chevy Suburban. Got home, sat on the sofa with a half-inch of vodka swirling in one of my parents' "company" drinking glasses . The music playing was ELO Out of the Blue, actually, the coda from Mr Blue Sky, which gets such a catchy fugue theme going at the end. The next morning, Sunday Feb. 5, 1978, parents come home, kisses on the cold-air smelling icy cheeks and noses, with the warm cosy smell of one's own mother gently thawing everything, ice, snow, girlfriends, brothers, bus rides, into blissful anomie.