Earlier this week I stood ironing. My son’s school slacks needed pressing and I had a wrinkled blouse. It was a weekday morning, early enough that everyone else was still in bed and the house was quiet. I dragged out the ironing table and stood it up, plugged in the iron.

I am one of those people who loves to iron. The Virgo in me loves to see the creation of order. The wrinkled made smooth, the limp made crisp.

As I listened to the thump and slide of the iron, my eye fell on the countertop across from me. There stood a green Depression glass bowl filled with oranges. And one green pear.

It’s gotten cold here again. The sky is gray and the wind is blowing. The yard grows bare. Most of the four o’clocks have died. Only one sturdy plant holds its ground. No blooms to be seen and even the black peppercorn seeds have dropped to the earth below where, come summer, bright fuschia petals will unfurl.

The gardenia bushes are still glossy green, though no fragrant creamy white blossoms are to be expected for months yet.

It is the rose bush in the corner of my front yard which surprises me. Long a shy and reluctant bloomer, now, due no doubt to some combination of cold and deeper roots, it flourishes. A lighter pink than my perfumed Maggies, which anchor the other side of the yard, the small roses run riot. They reach up over and through the fence, brushing the top of the rosemary bush.

On the other side of the fence, the rosemary bush nurtures tiny purple blossoms among the long, flat leaves which, when crushed, leave on my hands the smell of healing and remembrance.

Yesterday I took my time rising. When I went out for my walk, the air had warmed from the cold snap earlier in the week, though the sky was still gray.

On one of the wider streets, I looked up into a tree and found a long slender branch, the thickness of my thumb, had grown from the third lowest branch and meandered its way upward, winding around the tree’s trunk.

As I tried to follow its path, I found the treetop filled with mourning doves. Most swayed with the wind, one fluttered to a new branch.

Later, after I’d returned home, I heard a rushing sound. Going to the door, I discovered a steady rain.

This morning I set out to make cookies for my brother. Unable to find my own notes, I went to my cookbook shelves and, for the first time in a long time, pulled out a small wooden box of recipe cards. I had expected my grandmother’s handwriting, but opening it, I began to thumb through card after card in my mother’s hand.

Seeing her familiar writing, I remembered the years this recipe box had stood in one kitchen or another of her houses. I flipped past a recipe for “Trudy’s Bran Muffins” but stopped briefly at “Scripture Cake,” where each ingredient had its own passage from the Bible, and which was written in what was most likely my great-grandmother’s hand, since the notation read “copied 1893.”

I made a mental note to come back and investigate the typewritten letter, from my grandmother, no doubt, nestled in among the cards. “The lawyer said she would be unable to take the strain if Jensen did want to come home,” read the fragment that caught my eye. (On the other side, a recipe, also typed, for rhubarb crisp.)

I put the recipe box back onto the shelf. A small wooden box, now leaking dust, crammed full of instructions on recreating memories.

Last night I took my walk after dark. We emerged from our Thanksgiving cocoon of turkey and television, husband and I, into a night still warm from an Indian summer that had lasted far into autumn. The pavement was damp but no drops stood on our windshield. Less a light rain than a heavy fog, now gone, had passed over us while we, unaware, had dolloped whipped cream and sipped hot Turkish tea.

I stood on the sidewalk, momentarily alone. I looked across to a neighbor, and immediately all her lights snapped off. We walked the empty streets. It’s late November, he murmured to me, his tone low, in keeping with the softness of the evening air.

After a while, I turned to him. That’s the third house that’s gone dark when I passed. He looked up at the nearest street light. It had dimmed at our approach and was now completely spent. Halfway down the block, he turned to look back and chuckled in surprise. I turn around. The light was full bright.

We finish our walk. We cross two women walking a dog. At our porch, I hesitate, one foot on the bottom step.

Under the blind of the next door neighbor, the blue light of a television flickers.