Six

The first nor’easter came in on Thursday, just before dusk. It strengthened as dark fell, hitting its wild, fat glory around ten o’clock. Nathan was home alone, with nothing to do, and savored every lonesome moment. It was intoxicating, this sudden and violent coming of winter. He could feel his blood begin to thicken and slow, like cold honey.

He opened the shades, pulled his easy chair close to the largest window, and listened to Corelli. There was something very wintry about the baroque music of Arcangelo Corelli, those plaintive chords and wistful melodies. He preferred classical albums when he wanted his mind to wander; folk music made him think about work.

He watched as the wind grew, tossing large streaks of snow against his windows, so hard he could sometimes hear it slap the glass. By midnight, the snow was coming almost horizontally, piling up against the old oak tree in the yard. The streetlights groaned and swayed from the sudden gusts. Snow would blow fiercely across the yard; then suddenly dance upward and around, as if it was fighting to go back the way it came. Nathan made herbal tea and gazed out the window, blowing rhythmically on the steaming cup to the elegiac cadences of Corelli.

He didn’t think about much of anything, just stared, his eyes growing wider and wider as his mind grew cloudier and cloudier. When he went to bed, he left Corelli on the stereo, barely above a whisper, insinuating its alluring melancholy into his sleep.

He awoke the next morning in a warm, woolly funk, which he looked forward to indulging. Just a brood, he thought, a fine, wintry brood. He made tea, not coffee––don’t want to get too perky, spoil the exquisite grayness.

While the water boiled, he looked outside. Wet smacks of snow still clung to the windows and lined the frames like creamy icing. The yard was high with snow, well over a foot, piling toward the far fence, like it was trying to climb over. It remained cloudy, with occasional, fierce gusts that blew the snow as if it was still falling. It was white everywhere, except for the granite gray of the sky, the walls of the grand old houses down the street, and the stark black of the bare trees.

He got his tea and, softly blowing on it, returned to the window. The snow was piled on the panes, always more to the left than the right. He wondered why. Taking his first sip of hot tea, he looked into the yard, at the big oak in the sloping yard, and beyond, to the back fence. The branches on the farther trees looked hazy, almost blurry in the drifting air, but the big oak, the nearest tree, seemed sharply in focus. The effect was like a photograph with the background in soft focus, leading the eye to the foreground.

So Nathan looked back at the big oak. The branches seemed lower today, sagging under the weight of the snow. Maybe they just looked that way, because only the bottoms of the branches showed under the snow. That’s a strong old tree, he thought, nodding and sipping his tea; it’s used to wearing a little snow.

He saw one small bird on a high branch, huddled close into himself, head darting this way and that. Nowhere else to go, nowhere warmer, safer, happier. Boy, he knew that feeling, didn’t he? The storm is everywhere, the same miserable chill. So there’s no sense moving; there’s nowhere warmer, safer, happier. Just hunker down, crawl into yourself, wait it out. Wait it out. Wait it out.

No running today. Later he would shovel. The landlords had a blower, but always left his walkway alone, because he liked to shovel himself out. There was something satisfying about shoveling your way back into the world, scraping a winding little path from his stoop out to Craigie Street.

He waited till nearly dusk, after the streetlights came on, then shoveled to the street, and walked slowly into Harvard Square. The lights shone differently somehow, more yellow than white, making the grand houses look older, more quaint, more out of place and time as the shadows crept over them, blacker and more sharply defined than usual. He wondered why.

After a winter storm, images in the night air always seem sharper, the silhouettes more distinct. Did the cold do that? The earlier darkness? Maybe it was the contrast with the whiteness of the snow; but no, it must be something else, because it was the same with the shadows cast by the bare trees on the walls of the old homes. He stuffed his hands deep in his coat pockets, twirled his wool scarf tighter around his neck, and walked slowly, hearing the new snow crunch beneath his boots.

It was so much quieter in the wake of the storm. It wasn’t just the lack of traffic, though it was certainly light for rush hour. Even the human sounds were softer, more muffled. It was like something else. What? He stopped as he rounded Mass. Ave., where it tumbled crookedly into the square. What was it? He looked up at the sky, almost black above the lights of the city. Yes, that’s it; it’s the same way the air sounds on the hottest days, that same eerie, muted quiet. Odd. Perhaps it’s the birds falling silent, becoming sullen in the worst weather, cold or hot. Not many birds now, though. The quiet was broken by the distant metal screech of plows on the jagged old streets. Not a good sound. He hunched his shoulders into the wind, and walked over to Brattle Street. Nice to have nothing to do.

The second nor’easter, even stronger, blew in sudden and furious, early Saturday night. Rare to have two so close together, but there were lots of rare things happening with the weather these days, weren’t there? Good lord, have we actually managed to break the weather?

Kit was spending a few days in Connecticut, so once again, Nathan had nothing to do but savor the storm. He repeated everything he’d done before. He pushed his easy chair to the window, sipped tea, and listened to Corelli. Thought about nothing, deeply.

Around ten, he got a big box out of the bedroom closet, marked Winter Duds. He pulled out a pair of too-big sweatpants, a ridiculously oversized hooded sweatshirt, thick wool socks, and his furry slipper socks. The first feel of the huge clothes and the first sounds of those idiot slipper socks––pluf, pluf, pluf––always made him feel sublimely ridiculous, almost childlike. But they kept his body heat in, surrounding him with warmth that soaked deep into his bones, since it was actually his warmth, kept close in by the thick, loose clothes.

A little after two in the morning, with the storm still slapping hard against the windows and walls, he took a hot bath, now listening to the droning sixteenth-century choral music of Giovanni Palestrina. All about God, at least that’s what the lyrics say; but so sad, full of knowable human yearning and the long fear that is always there.

He unfurled his old comforter and turned the thermostat down. The chillier the apartment was, the more acutely he felt the captured heat within his baggy clothes. He put Palestrina on so low that it felt more like he was remembering it than hearing it, and went to bed. He slept like he was dead.

He awoke heavily. The comforter, full of his own heat, drowned him with a delicious lethargy. Overnight, his solitude had deepened. As he slowly got out of bed, the aloneness filled him, made his ears seem clotted and his eyes cloudy, as if all his senses had thickened and slowed, like almost frozen water. It felt like there was a coat of down inside his head, blanketing his brain with an almost liquid warmth. It was delightful, sensuous, and, he knew, deep down, it was dangerous.

And that’s when he started avoiding Kit.

“Nice dy 4 styg wrm ; )”

Nathan stared at the e-mail, shook his head, and stared some more. It was like hieroglyphics, utter nonsense. What did it say? Did it say anything? Why was it there, staring at him, bothering him, if it didn’t have anything to say?

It was from Kit, so he shook his head again and tried to focus. Have to answer this. But what does it mean? It was written in that e-mail shorthand so many people use now, as if we’re all in too big a hurry for entire words. What’s the hurry? What’s the hurry? What’s the hurry?

He sighed and looked out the window. The sky was still slate gray, but distant portions appeared a little brighter, as if the sun might peek out later. He hoped not; gray was good. He looked back at the computer screen.

“Ah,” he whispered, suddenly seeing it: “Nice day for staying warm.” And then she’d ended with a semicolon wink. It was the first time he’d heard from Kit since sinking into the delicious comfort of his old dark world, and she was asking about getting together. What could he say? He would say no, of course, not now, not yet. But how could he say that? How could he explain that to her?

He couldn’t actually lie, but what was the truth? That he wanted to court his old gray mistress today, tomorrow, a little longer, a little more, alone, a little more alone? How could he tell her that?

He couldn’t. Hitting the reply button, he wrote, in his old-school complete words: “Can’t. Stuff to do.” It seemed brittle, so he added “Sorry,” then sent it. Almost immediately she replied “cool. later, k.” He turned off the computer. It can’t bother him if it’s not on.

He put Corelli on the stereo, then quickly replaced it with the darker ache of Palestrina. He sat in the big chair by the window, set his padded feet on the sill, sipped his tea, and stared out into the silence of the storm’s wake. He thought little, just felt the old sadness, swelling and ebbing, almost throbbing in that strange way it did. And he welcomed it.

As he sank into the gray, Nathan felt the familiar longing to retreat completely into his solitude. The darkness crept around him, flannel-warm, friendly, and forbidden. It was bad stuff, hugging him, fooling him; making him believe that aloneness was actually a form of feeling, and not numbness. He knew, though, that he needed to go down there, down into the dark, to confront the part of him that still wanted to live there. Or was that his way of making this retreat feel like something else?

Kit was doing a suburban open mike on Tuesday and had told him before the storms that she had to waitress the next few Wednesday nights. She wouldn’t be at the jam, either.

Was this about her? He shook his head stupidly. How much of this was about her? Were the old mumbles coming back, the old fears about loving someone? Or was this just his craving for a life alone, a life apart, the sad safety of believing there’s nothing worth doing, worth even trying to do? He shook his head again, and cranked up the stereo. Later.

What he did know was that he had some time. Time to work into this, burrow into it, see how he felt before he had to face her again. Face her? Jesus, it sounded like he was stepping out on her. Was he? Later.

He didn’t do much, puttered around the house, shoveled his walkway, hung all his winter clothes in the closet, and put his T-shirts and shorts in the Winter Duds box for spring. Mostly, he stared, out the window, at the walls, at pictures in old magazines, and thought about nothing, deeply.

He played his guitar, always huddled near the windows, looking out at the dead white winter. He sang every wintry song he knew but dwelled on “Frankie On the Sheepscot,” by Maine songwriter Gordon Bok. It was about two hardscrabble fishermen trying to work the Sheepscot River in winter. But mostly, it was just about winter.

He’s never got a hat on, and the snow is all about him,

And it packs around his head like his own skin.

Nathan was hypnotized by the rhythm he played on the guitar, a quick 3/4 roll of treble notes, slapping against the slower drone of the bass strings. It was like a slow boat bobbing in a fast river, the high strings lapping like waves and the driving bass notes like the rushing current.

And yet most of the lyrics tumbled out in 4/4 time, as if struggling against the relentless cadence of the river. It felt tense and unbalanced, like a body lurching this way and that, trying to stay steady on a swaying surface.

“Don’t I hate this foolish river!” Frankie cries,

“Up and down her like a yo-yo on a string.

Go out in the morning and tear up,

Mend all your afternoon,

And all this dirty river staving by.”

But Nathan wasn’t hearing the words, just feeling the winter cold in them. It was the motion and the winter images that entranced him. He would only play the guitar sometimes, waiting for the most vivid winter lines, and singing them.

There’s nothing out there but hard times,

And time and the flying snow.

He would stop singing, and play that hard, rolling guitar rhythm––the quick-rushing trebles notes against the slow slap of the bass strings, waiting, waiting. Then he’d sing:

And time and the flying snow.

And time and the flying snow.

Again, he would close his mouth, shut his eyes, and feel the unbalance between the 3/4 guitar and 4/4 verses, like a life lived out of time, careening to and fro, struggling to stay upright against a world with its own cadence, its own purpose.

And time and the flying snow,

And all that pretty river rolling by.

By Tuesday, Nathan found it difficult to talk, even to sing. He had prepared a set exploring different types of work songs, but that was out of the question. Sea chanteys and field hollers? “Haul away, Joe,” and, “Whoa, back, buck?” Not a chance.

Hunched in front of the Dooley’s microphones, head down, he opened with a quiet instrumental, daring the audience to give him their attention. Then he sang “Frankie On the Sheepscot,” barely above a whisper. He finished with what was, to him, the most wintry of the old British ballads, “Unquiet Grave,” with its desolate introduction:

The wind blows cold on my true love,

And a few small drops of rain.

I never had but one true love;

And in greenwood she lies slain.

Afterwards, Ferguson muttered, “Either lighten up, or give me a toke of what you’ve been smoking, hoss. You okay?”

Nathan shrugged, said, “Winter,” and walked away. Even Ferguson was too much company right now.

On Wednesday, Kit e-mailed, writing only, “RUOK?” After a few bleary moments deciphering it, he wondered if she was beginning to worry. But that seemed ridiculous: why would she? Worry about him? Someone like Kit?

Still, he couldn’t keep ignoring her. He wrote back, “I’m taking a little time by myself.” That was true, wasn’t it? She wrote back immediately, saying, “gd 4 u. xxx K.”

On Thursday, she e-mailed again: “still ok?” He replied, “Yes, fine.” Then, feeling utterly foolish, but hoping it might send the right message, he added three x’s at the end. She did not reply.

By Sunday, Nathan knew he was in trouble.

He thought about all the years he had spent this way, not just alone but dug in, entrenched in his aloneness. You don’t realize how passive you get; you just start whittling away at your life. You tell yourself you’re prioritizing: you don’t need this, don’t need that. But how can you prioritize when nothing seems important? Because life is no longer something you’re doing; it’s something that’s happening to you, a storm hitting you from all sides. What can you do? People, places, things, events: they have nothing to do with you. And you have nothing to do with them.

It’s the little details you start to ignore first, the everyday things; and you say you’re focusing on the necessary things. But you’re not getting to them either. This errand can wait until tomorrow; you don’t need to do that chore right now. Instead, you look out the window, and ponder how little you have to do with anything in your life. The storm is everywhere; there’s no sense moving, nowhere safer, warmer, happier. Hunker down, wait it out. Wait it out. Wait it out.

Nathan looked out the window, remembering what it was like back then, when nothing seemed like it was worth doing.

“God, but I was deep in,” he whispered and got up to make some coffee.

He returned to the window, sipping his coffee; and for some reason remembered the day, several years ago, when he first went out to buy a plant. Something alive in the house, he thought. He couldn’t even conceive of it as something else alive in the house. Not yet. But it was a first swing of the hammer against the great gray wall he’d built around himself; and it let in a small, but crucial, shard of light. Had he known that at the time? No. Well, maybe a little. Dimly.

Now he saw it with such clarity: his first convincing blow against the comforting dark. Those weak, early blows accomplish so much more than they seem to at the time. They are the mortal wounds to the darkness you are fighting your way out of. The rest simply widen the crack through which your life can pour back in. Those first blows win the war; only battles follow.

His first blow began so innocently. The winter after he quit drinking, he picked up a little Christmas tree at the nearby Whole Foods market. It was perched ridiculously on the meat counter, a tiny fir about two feet high, bedecked in dorky ornaments. He looked sympathetically at it, thinking it would probably be grateful to get out of the public eye with all those stupid things on its boughs. It looked embarrassed, at least to Nathan, like a dog dressed up cutely, pleasing only its owner.

He brought the little tree home, took off its dorky ornaments and let it just be a tree. What’s wrong with that? But he also lined up the ornaments on the kitchen counter, because Christmas was a time for dorkiness.

After the holidays, the damn thing just wouldn’t shrivel up and die, like the card it came with said it would. Some spreading green thing was now growing out of its soil, all heathery and delicate; and the tree’s boughs seemed to be spreading. He wasn’t sure it was really growing; it wasn’t supposed to. Maybe it was just his imagination. But one morning in late January, it was unmistakable: the larger boughs were beginning to bend toward the morning light in the window.

Well, he couldn’t throw it out now; it was getting acclimated. It seemed happy, and it certainly wasn’t bothering him. A little water now and then wasn’t such a big chore. And when it goes all brown in a week or two, that’ll be that.

Six months later, it was getting a little brown around the bough tops, but still happily stretching toward the window. When it finally died in late July, its needles brown and falling, Nathan felt a little lonesome for it.

That’s when he decided to go buy a plant. Such a thing had been unthinkable in his traveling days, when he’d be away for months at a time. Much of his austere lifestyle had been a stubborn refusal to give up those old road priorities. It had also gotten easy to not do things.

Still, it was nice having that little tree around; nice knowing he was making something happy by giving it a gurgle of water, sliding it closer to the window that it liked so much. Nice to be connected to something living.

But as usual he hesitated a day, two, a week. Something wriggling inside him back then, however, made him want to follow through. Not because having a plant was so important, he told himself, but isn’t it time you started following through on some of these things? You can do anything you want. You’re sober now; the world is your oyster. Lord, what a revolting image. What moron dreamed up that one?

And so, one blustery summer Saturday, he drove to a nearby nursery with a large sign that said Live Organic Plants. He wasn’t sure what kind of live plant one could buy other than an organic one; but it had always looked like a friendly place, and he’d always wished it had something he wanted to buy so he could find out if it was.

This was that day.

He didn’t know what he wanted, except that he didn’t care much for flowers. He liked things that looked wild, or at least a little weedy. He’d loved the heathery little thing that sprouted out of the tree’s soil: something like that, perhaps. Something wild, not cultivated, bred, and hybridized. Maybe that’s what they meant by organic plants. He hoped so. A little patch of outdoors for the house, that’s all; a bit of meadow by the window.

He found a sprawling, low plant that looked very much like a tiny meadow. It grew this way and that, thick in some places, thin in others. The clerk told him it needed little care, just some water and window light.

But as he asked questions, he made the mistake of saying he’d never had a plant before, and the woman helping him decided to help this poor man join the green world. By the time she was through, Nathan had bought a huge box of organic plant food, a water spritzer for the leaves, a bag of organic soil (organic dirt?), and three sizes of pots to accommodate the plant as it grew. Wandering out to the parking lot in a daze, he was surprised she hadn’t made him sign adoption papers.

He remembered all that now, years later, gazing out at the snowy yard from his kitchen window. He was surprised at how much more clearly he saw it today than he did back then; how much he understood about how important it had been. Too bad about that; he should have thought better of himself back then. Prouder.

They were hard, those first few steps, very hard. Always the most painful. And yet, he took them; small and clumsy though they were. He took them.

He looked out at the inviting shadows of the gathering dusk. No, he thought. Just that single word. No.

Once, and then twice, he said it out loud.

No. No.

Nathan wasn’t sure what he had to think about, as he pulled on his old leather coat the next afternoon. He didn’t know where the day’s brood would take him, just that it was time to think this through. He was beginning to bore himself, always a good sign; and he was worried about Kit. What must she be thinking?

Enough! Get a handle on this, damn it; brood to your heart’s content, but figure this out. Those were the marching orders, and where else but Harvard Square, God’s own brooding ground?

Everybody surrenders a little as they get older, he thought as he wandered into the square. The sidewalks were more narrowly shoveled since the second storm, only a thin footpath between shoulder-high banks of snow. People turned sideways to pass each other, most smiling and whispering “excuse me” as they squeezed by. Not being in the mood for that much conversation, Nathan walked into the street. Large pools of icy, dirty water lined the streets, forcing him too often into traffic. He walked toward the roomier spaces on the far side of the square.

Maybe you simply get tired, he thought. Restful. You begin to like things being uneventful. Events aren’t all they’re cracked up to be, you realize as you get older. You don’t want more grand failures, and if the price for that is giving up hope of grand success, well, that seems reasonable. How many grand successes were there?

Maybe that’s why he enjoyed Kit’s ambition, when he had, most decidedly, not enjoyed Joyce’s. He still had ambition then: fire rubbing against fire. Was that it?

He stopped in the heart of the square, where Mass. Ave. meets quirky Brattle Street, watching the first rush-hour cars plod slowly by. Was that it? Was he lamenting his lost ambition?

Dusk was beginning to fall. It comes so early this time of year. Car lights came on but didn’t brighten the road. The sky over the university was no longer blue and not yet gray, and stark shadows crept up the redbrick walls. Lost ambition. Was that it?

He strolled down JFK Street, hands stuffed in his coat pockets, past where a storied music bar once was, now a pizza place; past where another famous nightclub had been. It became a comedy club, then a Buck a Book, and then a fast-food sandwich joint. There’s progress for you.

Had he given up? Was that it? Surrendered? What did he want from his music anymore? Was he still lusting after another try at the brass ring? Ridiculous. At his age? He knew he couldn’t compete with the likes of Kit. That was still a game for the young.

And if he could––even if he could––did he still want to? Touring? Where’s the motel tonight? Giving up his little lair for months at a time? He remembered something Joyce had told him when she was on top of the pop charts. They were getting a bit drunk backstage after her first sold-out show at Symphony Hall, Boston’s most prestigious venue. Her triumphant return.

“There’s a bad moment,” she whispered, as though sharing a secret, “when you realize that a tour bus is just a bus. You’re living on a bus––that’s your dream come true. A bus.”

At the time, he’d thought she was gloating, in her typically self-serving way––only Joyce could pout and boast in the same breath. But she was also trying to warn him, wasn’t she? Or perhaps to comfort him. Maybe she always knew he wasn’t going where she went.

Now, wandering across JFK Street in the winter twilight, Nathan thought about how much he enjoyed his ordinary mornings. Coffee or tea? Running or yard work? Corelli or Woody Guthrie? He loved that, especially after all the hard, empty years of cheap motels and strangers’ sofas. These domestic rituals gave him pleasure so disproportionate to the small comforts they provided. It was as close to contentment as his train wreck of a life had ever let him get. But there was a certain surrender to it, too. Lie down, you’ve fought long enough. Take it easy. There, there, now.

Well, then, what did he want? Did he want anything anymore? The question sounded bad and he tried to bat it away. Later, later. But he knew; instantly, he knew.

A narrow cobbled sidewalk lined with wooden benches cut across a tiny common called Winthrop Square. Nathan walked to the bench in front of Grendel’s Den, once his favorite Harvard Square watering hole. He brushed off the snow and sat down. So what did he want?

But before he asked, he knew. Even as he brushed the snow, he knew. The answer had come in one small, simple word: useful. He wanted to pick up his guitar and feel like it mattered to someone besides pitying old friends, hopeless students, and hungry open-mikers.

As soon as he thought that, however, he knew it wasn’t true. He would have believed it a few years ago. He would have ignored the fact that he wasn’t being fair to his students, who took such delight in being able to learn their favorite songs; and that most of his open-mikers welcomed his praise and advice. They no longer bristled impatiently while he did his little sets. Hell, some of them took notes. Kit took notes.

So today, with the winter darkness falling around him, the thought of his music being useful––at least a little bit useful––brightened his mood and quickened his breath. It didn’t remind him of all the things he had once wanted so much, but of what he had now, today. It made him think of the set he’d drawn up on work songs, and how excited he’d been to try it. Before the storm; before the return of the welcoming gray, the comfortable cold.

And it made him think of Kit.

He was of some use to her, wasn’t he? She would get where she was going with or without him, but that wasn’t the point. He was helping her. He loved that about their relationship. Around her, somehow, he didn’t feel like such a failure, even as he watched her career surpass his, in such simple easy hops. He didn’t mind it a bit; in fact, it was great fun rooting for her. Why? Well, here you are again, right back where you started.

He looked around at little Winthrop Square, with its snowy lawn and neatly lined benches. Near the curb, there was a curious stone marker, old and broken, saying Newtowne Market. It was from the early seventeenth-century, bearing the city’s original name; before it became a college town in 1637 and decided “Cambridge” was a more erudite moniker. Nathan grinned. There’s actually a date certain for when this town first aspired to pretentiousness.

Snow lay in the jagged, stone edges of the broken marker, and Nathan wondered how long it had lain like that. It had obviously belonged to something grander once.

He sighed loudly, and got back to the topic at hand. Where was I? Ah, yes, Kit, lovely Kit. She was the only thing in his life that didn’t feel complicated to him.

What? How could that be? She’s a woman, for god’s sakes, and she’s in love with you. And you find that uncomplicated? You? His feelings toward her certainly seemed complicated: lover, mentor, compadre, peer, teacher, to name a few. But they all somehow resolved into the single, imponderable sensation of love. She filled him in so many different ways, and he loved them all. So why was he avoiding her? Ah, well, that’s easy: because Nathan Warren complicates everything, and nothing so thoroughly as the uncomplicated.

Oh, screw that. Not fair. He needed to think this through, to face the old longings, the solitary life he’d lived for so long. And he needed to do that alone.

So. Is that it? Are we done? His mood was brightening; but nothing much got settled, did it? Yes, it did. You asked yourself a Big Question; and you got an answer. Sort of. But then, most of the Big Questions have only sort-of answers. He’d learned that much.

He thought about the lure of the solitude, how quickly it had seduced him in the dusk of that first storm. Kit is not the problem; your feelings for her are not the problem. But she’s not the answer, either. The great emptiness you’ve worn around you like a favorite old blanket, the emptiness that was almost a lover to you, is neither ended by her nor deepened by her. Funny, you’d think it would be one or the other.

But it is lifting, he realized. That great empty space is lifting. A little. Let it. Don’t push it, but let it. It’s still there, that’s for sure; maybe it always will be. Does a fog like that ever lift completely? Probably not; the aloneness would always be part of him. He’d have to try to explain that to her; she needed to know, deserved to know. And he’d think more about that notion of being useful.

So yes, I guess we’re done now. Nathan slapped his thighs, straightened up on the bench, and said, “Well, okay then.” Was that out loud? He glanced around, but nobody seemed to notice. Yeah, like talking to yourself in Harvard Square is going to draw attention. Peeing on the monuments, maybe; but then again, this is rush hour. He got up, laughing to himself, and walked home.

Before he called Kit, he wrote a note to himself on a small piece of paper, folded it neatly, and put it in his wallet. It was a trick he used for remembering things, but he’d never used it quite this way. It didn’t say “Buy strings” or “Only two drinks an hour.” It said, “Don’t be so fond of safety.”

The large moments of our lives, the crossroads moments where the choices we make really matter, are rarely kind enough to come to us boldly, announcing their importance. Nathan had just traveled through one of those moments, though he wouldn’t know that for some time. And when he finally did, he would realize it had been a very different moment than he thought at the time.

But what was important then, and always in these moments, is that he faced it as honestly as he could. So how he passed through that moment, although he didn’t understand it yet, set him on the better path. Even now, he thanked Kit for that. What would take him more time to figure out was what he was thanking her for.