"A blizzard is coming"

1. Walking Lilith, I ran into an older woman who walks her sister's dog; she's 81, but looks older, is frail and bent over. But as soon as she starts talking about politics she becomes fierce, her opinions delivered in a Massachusetts accent. "Did you see those women in the elevator?" she asked. So many women are angry. Then: when she was 12 she was abused by her dentist. "Can you imagine, a dentist?" He was her father's best customer for heating oil (huge house, she said, in which he had his office). The dentist's wife was her mother's best friend. She didn't tell her mother because her mother was "physical": she was scared her mother would "slug" her. She never told.

2. Walking to Radhika's second soccer game of the day, I heard a man talking under a tree. No trades, still hot air. Beside him was a bicycle, laid on the ground, green. I saw no cell phone, but heard him talking about dog sleds. A blizzard. A blizzard is coming. The dog sleds.