The Last Word On Nothing

Update, 1/27/2026: When I wrote this post, January was lying low. It has now risen from the deep with monstrous noises. So, a cold snap, fair enough. And then my boiler (which I think of as a furnace, no clue how wrong I might be) started not heating very well then not at all so I called 4 technicians over 4 days during which the home temp was around 60. Luckily the last tech was a genius who replumbed the whole damn thing as far as I can tell and the heat came back on. In time for the all-time record-setting snow and sleet and ice storm with temps around 20. I’ve never seen snow removal done by picking it up by hand and flinging it on the pile. The piles take up maybe 3 or 4 parking places and are head-high. The kids burrow into them, their little feet sticking out. The snowdrops are 8 inches under. I think my car’s battery is dead but my nerves are too shattered for me to check. The national horror continues. Big guns out, indeed.

A friend calls it Goddamned January and she has good reasons — intensive caregiving and difficult health decisions — to hate it. My reasons for hating it are also personal — my son and husband both died in Januaries — but I have case against it that’s general and over the years I have backed the case with evidence.

In 2020, I was getting over a bad bad cold and being comforted by snowdrops. In retrospect, even if that bad cold was not the just-discovered covid — which wasn’t even being tested for — I had no idea, none whatsoever, neither did anyone else, that January was just the beginning and things were about to get unthinkably worse, in fact, to blow snowdrops right out of the water.

In 2023 and 2024, January was getting tired of covid and fixing its wicked eye on infrastructure, that is, water pipes and gas lines and electric lines were blowing up and leaking and fritzing out left, right, and center, Baltimore was covered with snow and frigidity, and local freezing semi-isolated Baltimoreans hunkered down for an urban apocalypse, we were used to it by now. The neighborhood kids put on turquoise snowpants and dug themselves into caves; they made it seem like an option.

Currently January of 2026 is lying low, though it has lain low before and might be ramping up. Locally, it’s disrupting work schedules with broken websites and giving neighbors some kind of non-lethal but lingering flu. Nationally, it’s horrific, I ashamed of my country, I can’t even imagine people say these things and act like this, I’m ashamed of the whole damn species. The national horrificity could easily get local, we’re not immune and snowdrops and turquoise snowpants aren’t going to work any more. It’s time for the big guns.

1. At the farmers’s market, no coffee yet but still highly focused meaning I was using up the day’s allotment of executive function, paid for some soup and left without the soup. I did the rest of my shopping, was stowing it in my car when an energetic black lady came up to me. The market is at the intersection of three very different neighborhoods, three distinct communities of differing colors, concerns, and household budgets, except at the market everybody has the same aim; the market is one of the places where a segregated Baltimore feels like the same city. The lady was breathing hard. “I’ve been following you all over the market,” she said, “you went way up to that bakery. And you forgot your soup.” She handed me my soup. “You’re a wonderful person,” I said, “I can’t believe you did this, thank you so much.” Why did she do this? She wasn’t that interested in being thanked. I couldn’t think of how to tell her what she’d done.

2. Same market, different day, this one freezing freezing cold. I got in line for the meat stand behind an old black lady leaning on a wheeled walker with a chair. Standing still in that cold was brutal. “You go ahead of me,” she said. “Oh no,” I said, “you’re next.” “I’m in no hurry,” she said, “I have to wait for my ride.” “But you’re as cold as I am,” I said. “No, I got three layers on,” she said, “I got three pairs of pants and three sweaters. I’m not cold.” “I’ve got on only two layers and that’s where I went wrong,” I said. “You are the kindest person. I thank you and I’ll be fast.” I was, got my sausage and left, and she walked up to the farmer and said, “Good morning, Ryan.” He’d been friendly and polite to me, as always, but for her, he hollered, “Good MORNING, Ms. Tina!” and “You want some turkey today?” and he smiled all over his face.

3. A while back: a delivery kid dropped a package on my porch and headed down the sidewalk, and I yelled, “Thank you!” “You’re welcome, you have a nice day, auntie,” he said, looked back and smiled, then got in his truck and took off. He pronounced it Ahntie. “Auntie,” I said to myself and I’ve been saying it ever since, “auntie.” I’m not going to forget that kid. I’m not going to forget any of these people.

4. And this most recent one: early morning on a grey, chilly, rainy day, I was driving down a city street and had to slow down by an apartment building because a fox was crossing the street into a hotel courtyard. I stopped the car to look for where the fox went but it disappeared the way foxes do. On the sidewalk I saw a young woman, bundled up, standing dead still and looking at something with a sweet, delighted smile. I wondered if she was seeing the fox, so I looked where she was looking, and sure enough, there it was, heading out of the courtyard as though it owned the place. Which at one time, before apartments and hotel and streets, it had. Anyway, when I drove away she was still standing there, intent, absorbed. I’ve seen that same smile on people standing around Michelangelo’s David, looking up at him, falling in love, loving the thing for its own sweet self, not to get love back but because the thing is so so beautiful.

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Machine guy nest in Finland, 1940: Military Museum of Finland, via Wikimedia Commons

A Vahanvaty from Dubai, UAE, via Wikimedia Commons