Scrooge

A friend told me the other day he’d heard baby had melted me into “nothing,” which he said as a loving compliment. I had chosen to freeze my heart along my life’s journey from time to time, like anyone, and I had also had my heart freeze without any conscious choice on my part – like anyone. What I had no idea of was how much of it had frozen, seemingly most of it. The nature of Scrooge, I suppose, is that he doesn’t know he’s Scrooge, until he does.

While reading beside the woodstove downstairs tonight, baby’s voice carried down to me from the second floor and melted another portion of my icy self. What woe there had been locked up there. What joy is there now.