New year, new world

Poems to the contrary, February is the cruelest month in Boston. While it makes for some pretty pictures on postcards, the days are just not warm enough, the wind is just a little too strong, and the snow is under my skin. It’s those hidden patches of ice, waiting to throw you down, that get to you. Still, the days are just a bit longer, and we’re all trying on some hope. A young president promises relief from our pain, and you want to believe. But it is a long way to summer, no joking.

So I dug out a November photo of Howth, jutting out into the Irish Sea, a bus ride from Dublin, and remembered to look up. Liz would stop in her tracks when I would exclaim the size of the Irish sky. You always say that, O’Hare, and how can a sky be any bigger anywhere. But for a small island, Ireland has a big lid, sweeping in from the west, dragging the wet of the Atlantic across the fields and up damp streets. “A soft day” is a day when the rain isn’t hard. Tromping the hills of Howth, home to the Norse and John Banville and a shower of tourists when the day is fair, on a promontory stuck out into the sea, a stone's throw from Ireland's Eye, the sky can swallow you up. Fast moving, fierce clouds mingle with the sea in a primordial swirl, and when the sun breaks through – it always breaks through – it’s a hand of god moment.

Boston this February is cruel, cold, broke. Economic slush and social calamity. But I chanced to look up, spied a star - Orion’s left foot? A wandering planet? One Twin? And the glimpse saved me.