The walk back from school is slow transit.
More so, when there is snow.
For Jones, it’s like some sort of magical Play-Doh has blanketed the city. He throws himself into snowbanks. Lies there like a soldier waiting to take a hill. Tumbles off and into a neighbouring yard, makes a snow angel. Stomps on the thin ice puddles, cracks them up, and then slushes through the remainder. He lifts every snow boulder he can find. Holds it over his head like The Incredible Hulk and then smashes it on the ground.
A big, fresh grin on his face.
His cheeks flushed, eyes sparkling.
His little bowtie peeking up beneath his vivid, blue snowsuit.
And then he picks up a stick. The perfect stick. Ideal weight and length. It is an instrument of magic. Jones trails it along a wrought iron fence, delighting in the sound. “Daddy, I am playing a song for you, a song you like.” And then he starts ringing the bells of the bicycles locked against the fence, and the song becomes something larger. The sparrow cheeping from within a hedge, distant voices arriving and vanishing, a car driving slickly past on the road, the swish-swish of Jones’ snowsuit, my breathing. All these sounds now alive and in concert. One song instead of many. This music, as if called forth by Jones to come into being at this exact time and place.