10/24/10 Playing with frost on the window

Feathers and crystallized mandalas and god's-eyes and fleurs-de-lis and diamonds and Lucky Charms and snowflakes and stars. Back when the world was a portion of a century younger, we didn't have such good insulation in our windows. We didn't have year-round windows that were so frickin hard to wash, reaching around the permanent frickin frame. Instead, we had these hook on the top windows, and brackets on the house windowframe and the windows you stored on 2 x 4's in the basement, washing them outdoors with soapy water and rags and newspaper and then ripped sheets in late September every year, as you take down their summer analogs with the screens. Wipe the spider webs and dirt out of the window wells, hook on the storm windows and lock them shut. Of course they leaked around the edges, and of course in freezing weather, they made all the little frost shapes and tokens. And then you, with your dreamy childish self, would look out into the frozen yard, and use the meat of your childish fist to make a little peep-hole out into the crystalline magic-land of winter. Or you'd make a daisy, with its petals your pinky fingerprints, its eye the tip of your thumb's print. Or a footprint with your fist's heel and fingerprint toes. And the frost sealed onto the glass like a damask weave, grey and white, and the cold shavings on your fingernails and even a tongue print sometimes, but not on the coldest days. Frost on windows. I don't think my 17 year old son has ever seen it.

A post on 10/28, written previous to this one, talks about the designs of frost, too.