Come on, I said, it'll be fun.

The game bleeped off and he got up without saying anything. I grabbed our parkas and gloves from the closet and a cord that was on the hat shelf. We went into the mud room to put our boots on, then out the door.

The brightness of the morning was blinding. We rubbed our eyes against it and tramped across the snowy meadow. Our feet made deep holes and crunching sounds that did not carry. The hill we hiked to lay between a partially frozen stream and the end of a pine forest. The running water, what there was of it, seemed extra black.

Halfway up the hill my son slowed his pace, stopped to rest. I saw his breath pluming thickly and asked, as if I didn't know, what the matter was.

He shivered and said, I'm tired, and cold.

Zip your coat.

I want to go back inside.

I held up the cord. There's no sledding inside, I told him, and resumed climbing. He followed, trudging.

When we reached the top I saw that his coat was wide open. I zipped it for him, and even buttoned the collar.

There, I said.

He grimaced, lifted his chin this way and that.

Ignoring him, I looped the cord behind me and around each of my shoulders, tied it over my chest. Then I knelt, flattened myself out, felt a chill spread across my stomach.

But…

Just sit down and be quiet.

He complied, got on me holding the cord.

Tell me when you're ready, I said, and glanced around. A high wind was swaying the pines, their frosted boughs. Powder flew up from random cascades to expose patches of wet greenery. The crooked line of the stream stood out like a crack in a porcelain plate, and I could hear the faintest burbling.

Two sets of tracks punctuated the middle of the meadow. I noticed my son's tracks were smaller than mine, and more ragged. Looking at them, as they diverged here and there, made me lonely. I thought of him growing up, that he was twelve, almost thirteen—next year he might not sled with me at all.