He’s someone’s working-class uncle in a 1950s black and white photo, short dark hair, doughy face clamped around an unlit cigarette. I return his nod. Instead of the required "Nice day" or "How are ya?" he plunges in, too quick. "I’m a dollar short for the bus in Providence." I slow down to return the serve, lying right back, "They won’t care." "They’re tough down there," he persists, trying to recover, but I’m gone.

What a glorious time to be above ground. My great-granddaughter is a month old. Political spectacle to die for. Morning coffee. Spider in my cup, but smallish. Dead, and I saw him before I poured. Yesterday afternoon, because I’m the center of creation, I heard a mockingbird’s stylized rendition of a wood thrush, and that evening I heard the magical prototype. Today he mimicked a killdeer. I know what happens next.

Another year of the ordinary and inevitable: changes, endings, beginnings. Incompetence, corruption, poor decisions. Pain, suffering, and death. Yet I celebrate, because I must, the small miracles, one-offs and recurring. Kindness from a happy man working for City Hall. Warmth from February sun; year’s first red-winged blackbird. A waitress with unfathomable dexterity tying her apron strings in a bow behind her back.

Santa-hatted young couple walks to their car. He says, “I’m so bored with everything in life,” all faux world-weariness edged with drama. I’m judgmental: he’s self-absorbed, bereft of soul and wit, bankrupt. As my irritation and impatience subside, I settle on misdemeanor callowness. She says, “Everything-everything? Forever and ever?” She’s not liking how this might go. I don’t think he’s going to get lucky tonight.