It's merely a matter of meeting in a parking lot with hats. With warm hats. A chance meeting, and talking behind a bumper and a tail pipe and the faded, removed make label from a well used car on a dirt parking lot. Not cold enough that the breath shows, but enough that the upper ears bite.
Dozens are about to jump into Muskegon Lake in costume in a place where the lake ice has been cleared. The polar plunge, leaping into the near frozen waters for charity. The motive and life of downtown.
It's about meeting in the parking lot with meaningful people as the boys play in the yellow-green stiff grasses and find tire parts to play with and run and run and run, then discover a still standing pile of snow left over from when the buckled cement parts of the lot has been plowed.
There's the smell of a fireplace. No. A foundry. Like metal and wood. The scent of formed iron and sweet oak. Our friend will swallow fire and leap into the freezing cold lake in a pink tu-tu surrounded by hundreds.
The boys throw moss onto the thin shelf of ice as parents waiting to watch collectively yell at their children to back away from the marina's edge where the water is near freezing and six feet deep.
We'd parked along the fragmented and potholed asphalt parking lot and a meaningful friend happened to park next to us and we talked. And the boys played. And other friends gathered near and we made way to the polar dive and a wooden picnic table along the frozen marina.