Snow in the Forecast of Frailty

While taking a stroll by a nearby, secret pond; I began to think of James Joyce.

I began to think of his short story The Dead.

Midway through that story, Gabriel seems to look at Gretta, his long married thus long suffering wife as if he is seeing her for the first time. This moment of reverence is captured in two wonderful sentences.

"She seemed to him so frail that he longed to defend her against something and then to be alone with her. Moments of their secret lives together burst like stars upon his memory".

Hamlet speaks of the vulnerability of women in quite another light when he contemplates his mother Gertrude's hasty, opportunistic marriage to his uncle Claudius and observes "Frailty, thy name is woman"

Hey, I'm a twenty-first century male. I know women ain't frail. They been takin' turns kicking my butt for years in the ongoing battle for higher moral ground. They been putting up with labor and delivery since this whole rigmarole began. We all know about the threshold of pain and trhe creativity thing. They can take it and God knows they can dish it out,

There's no need to open any doors. Women are tough.

Then suddenly, one of those Joycean moments occurs. Right before our starstruck, secret life memories, the vulnerability of a woman appears like the hush of moonlit snowfall on an Irish evening. It is the memory as well as the anticipation of these moments that pull men away from the ball game, the job, the buddies in the bar room and into those places of reverence, rage, respect, delusion, destiny and desire that punctuate our bumbling, humbling masculinity in the love song of our lives.

We blunder through forests looking for dragons to slay but never wanting to stray too far from the woman we love and the chance to be alone with her when the danger has passed, the monster slain through our most grievious fault. We sit together by our fires, pretending to be thinking the same thoughts, insulated by silence; each hearing the separate songs of our childhood.

Eventually, reluctantly, we head back into routine while beauty gives way to wisdom beyond tears.

Then, one day, it snows again and our former footsteps on the pond somehow survive.