Winter came early that year.
By November, the kind of cold that made eighty-year-old bones feel their age had settled into New York with determined permanence. I moved more slowly. Tired more easily. Found myself appreciating warmth physical warmth, the warmth of people gathered closely, the warmth of purpose continued beyond what any individual might have expected to witness.
Dante had a health scare in December.
Nothing catastrophic a cardiac episode that required hospitalization, monitoring, medication adjustment, and the particular reckoning that comes when the body announces, clearly and without apology, that the years it has been accumulating have weight.
"I'm fine," he told the assembled family, who'd gathered at the hospital with the speed of people who'd learned that emergencies required presence rather than phone calls. "I'm eighty years old with a complicated history. My heart has opinions. This is not surprising."
