It took me going to Cambridge, Mass. to realize that in the big dig, I had lost the snowdrops; to realize that I used these early harbingers, questi bucaneve, to remind me that winter was waning and the spring sun was coming back.

Saturday morning, coming out of the Guesthouse, I saw these things pushing out from the wet, black earth at the bottom of the steps. Didn’t pay any more notice. Later in the day, the Brother talked about making connections and later still, while writing in the journal, it hit me that the things pushing out were snowdrops. And that in Pittsburgh, on the North Side, in the War Streets, I had lost the galanthus that for years had filled the flower-beds in mid-February.