Flying Motorcycles, Snow Cream & Eric

This morning: our first snow; already I feel so far away from last night when I dreamed I was shot in the leg during a bank heist, and then I was on the beach riding on the back of a moped; the surf, wild; I looked down; my leg was still bleeding. The roads are slick; Evel Knievel is dead; my childhood friend Eric is dead. Autumn's yellow leaves still fall outside, but the snow--all the snow, more, it seems, than they called for--and the leaves get tangled up in it.

Evel Knievel made it to 69.Imagine making it to 69. Eric was 34. Dad sent the email with the obituary: the vague language, the hospice, the dear friend. I can't believe it's 2007, and we're still afraid to say AIDS. I sometimes marvel at how complacent we can be, how complacent I can be--sipping ginger tea, walking to yoga in the winter, stringing words together.

When we were little, and Eric lived down the road--these were after Evel Knievel's daredevil days; he had already jumped across rivers and filed bankruptcy--first thing in the morning Joe and I would run down to Eric's house. It was still dark outside. Dad would just be getting home from working the graveyard shift at Honey's Inn, and Joe and I would run down, tap on the door, sit with Eric watching cartoons until dawn when we'd all wander outside and play war--pegging each other in the legs and arms with crab apples--until we got called in for supper.

There was no better time than the first snow. The night before we put out a big bowl, and come morning--a little twist in the universe--Eric would run up to our house, and Linda and Dave and Joe and Eric and I would watch as dad stirred the evaporated milk and the vanilla and the sugar into the snow. We sat, the six of us, around the table and ate it from bowls, saying mmm, mmm, mmm, I wish it could always snow! And so...in memory of Eric...I'm so very happy it's snowing this morning. I wish he could be here to lick the bowl. Another winter settles in--Superman is long gone; Evel Knievel has followed--and I am feeling old, feeling like I've known too many people who have died, feeling like I need to cherish every face around every table I'm lucky enough to be given a chair, feeling like maybe I could go back in time just a bit, maybe I should wake up my husband, bundle us up in scarves and mittens and three layers of shirts, and go stomping through the streets, pelting each other with snowballs, until finally, exhausted, we lay down in a field, flap our arms and legs wildly and make snow angels.