New York City, February 23, 2015

★★ A hissing wind came through the dead leaves still on the trees. Angled crackling or irregular ripples covered the surface of the fast-frozen sheet ice where the puddles had been. By early afternoon, the sun and salt were enough to liquify some things again, despite the biting wind. The seven-year-old wore his hood over his hat and kept looking for ways to angle out of the gusts on the walk west, toward the river. There the melted spots were fewer, the pavement blown dry. The wind held the preschool door shut, then grabbed it as it swung and held it open; it gave the stroller and the older boy’s parka a shove to speed them around the corner. “Go away, wind,” said the three-year-old, resentful and bossy. “Go away, wind.” Clouds like the belly scales of snakes slid across the sky. Then, from the shelter of the apartment, there was a tilted sheet of gray, the line of its edge angling from low in the south to high in the north. Take a picture, the seven-year-old urged. (Keep the window open, so I can stick my new year’s decorations out in the wind, the three-year-old added.) The cloud curtained the late sun into a dull circle for a while, then slid away in time to send ripe orange light bouncing off the apartment blocks, on the way to a smooth spectrum of sunset.