It’s the middle, and spring seems so far away. It’s like life’s goal, almost out of reach. But I’ve been through many a winter, and some even were fun.

So much depends on your companions. There was my cousin Heidi, the skier. She learned on the slope at the base of the Stierenberg, the mountain looming over a small watch-making town. From there, she skied Davos (yes, Davos) and Zermat and European resorts, especially the Swiss. She loved America, and the Vermont ski resorts were her winter breathing spaces. She took my brothers and me along. I remember the Taconic Parkway at five in the morning, still dark, with the snow piled along the sides. She was a safe driver, but not too safe.

She wasn’t going to stay in the East. The country was too vast, beautiful and friendly, the epitome of Western Civilization. She went west and met and married a Navy veteran. Hey, spring arrived for her; it’ll surely come again.

I believe in them. I see them doing good when the news catches some of them. I see them in my son. I worked hard for them in my career, and they did give me a vacation or two. True, I did work my vacations, but it was exhilarating. Great stories — teaching is not all drudge work.

I don’t pay attention to the new college kids. That’s what they still are, kids. You have to let them feel the knocks of life, the losses, the failures. Then they’ll produce, nurture, fashion, make. Life is not all sorrow, pain, insurmountable obstacles. It seems to have been designed by an all-knowing genius.

I am in awe not just of quantum mechanics, but now the new divisions of time, as uncovered by Israeli graduate researchers. And then there’s the complicated human social history — dealing with creatures who have free will, the choice of good and evil. Which will they choose?

Yes, some say it is the peak of Creation; nothing excels it in the universe (so far). Look how far it reaches, and in only a few cases, how far off the track it goes. It can earn enough to sustain it and others, and it can lose its way in a labyrinth not even doctors can unravel. It’ll be content with what is apparent, or it’ll soar in spirals of poetry and art like the eye has not seen, nor the ear heard.

We have all heard of dead ends, yet sometimes we fail to recognize them. History if full of them — there are the followers of Jim Jones drinking Kool-Aid in the jungle, the believers in the Ptolemaic solar system, the minions of Adolf Hitler and Karl Marx. It’s the matter of one thought, and you’ve lost the originator of life or his Son.

But hey, don’t despair. You find him in the song of a bird, the bud of a flower, a moment of a sunny spring day. I find him in my son’s accomplishments, all of them in some way traceable to the sometimes unknowing things I’ve done. Yes, dear one, we are not always aware of the ramifications of what we do, for our brain has to unscramble a lot, a lot.

I am now one of the people Jesus helped — the old, feeble, the halt, the lame. Gone the confident athlete, gone the pertinent physics student, gone the ambitious suitor. Yes, no need to despair, to get depressed. It’s part of the life cycle, and I can look back with some satisfaction that I cooperated with some of the chances, opportunities spread out before us by the creator of this magnificent civilization. Of course, nobody could avail himself of them all.

I so hope I can close that small chapter in this universe with dignity, with grace, with generosity, even as I felt generosity. I don’t have the means to be a philanthropist, but there may be someone who is glad I lived. Oh, I’m glad you live or lived; life would have been a lot less without you. You may have no idea what you contributed. But I have an inkling.

And how can I ever repay you unless there is life hereafter? I need an eternity to pay off my joys, happinesses, even small favors. Don’t doubt it; you’ll get paid.

I paid $100 to have a blog, gewkey.com, and nobody reads it.  I’ll have to stick to Facebook where I have a regular readership and can even count on their reaction.  My reaction to life and its mysteries is unique, but so is everyone else’s.

Language is what facilitates this.  Language leaves some kind of record.  Language is what enables one to learn almost everything.  Language is what baffles those who limit themselves to the record of nature, and who exclude the supernatural.

Homo ergaster (predating homo sapiens) is said to have figured out the rudiments of language by his use of tools—a good guess.  But then, none of us is certain about why we’re here except my nine-year-old granddaughter, who doubts very little.  (It is written—“out of the mouths of babes.”)