Fog brings conflicting memories to my mind. My earliest recollection of it stems from walking to McNulty Elementary School as a child, and taking a shortcut by cutting across a field. On certain fall mornings, the fog would be thick, and if we took the shortcut too soon we risked being engulfed in the middle of a field with no discernible landmarks for direction. A certain panic would sometimes set in when that happened, as much as the fog otherwise felt like a comfort. The group of kids with whom I walked didn’t always listen to me, and there were bound to be arguments about which direction we should take. That’s the memory of consternation, but the worry was mostly because it was affiliated with school.
The other memory I have is of a holiday excursion with my brother through the backroads of Galway, where we made a lunch-time stop at the Cock & Bull around Christmas tree season. It was, from what I now only dimly recall, a casual, flippant trip – unplanned and on the fly, which is much more my brother’s style than mine, and on this day it was one of those happy perspective-altering events that illuminates my fallacy in thinking there are definitive right and wrong ways to do everything.
In winter, I welcome a fog. It usually indicates kinder temperatures, and hints of spring.
