Versions of time--of wasted time, of stopped time, of forgotten time--flit along the roughened, shadowy borders of this sentence. There is a grammar, unspoken, that becomes a thought, a thought that becomes a scaffold. Should I resent the lost avenues, the nightmares that fade from horror to weariness to comic breakfast-table chatter? Last night I dreamed that my son had run away from home to hide, angry and unkempt, in a crack house by the sea. But when I repeat the tale, he laughs. Pedantry, protect me from pain. "Zip your coat, find your gloves," I order. He pulls up his hood; his hug is a stranglehold. He has a secret life beyond my ken. Oh, the cold has such a grip on us. Even the shingles groan, even the roots of the trees.