I stand up to leave the room and glance over at him; this scrawny scrap of a boy. Think’s he’s tough. I know where he is. I know what he’s rolling with. He’s not tough, but the show of bravado is everything. It’s a hot mess.

As I look at him and walk by his table, he throws me the middle finger; that’s all he has to offer. Silly thing. Bruised thing. This boy who once as a kindergartner, wandered to school in his pajamas; walking out of the house and down through dangerous city streets…in his dirty pajamas…heading to the school for sanctuary.

If he thinks he can move me with the middle finger, he does not know what I am rolling with. I know where I am. I’m made of far sterner and gentler stuff. I never wandered down dangerous city streets in my dirty pajamas, searching for sanctuary in a large, urban school building.

He’s a character out of a lowly chapter in a Dickens novel; this poor boy. This poor, dangerous boy. I look at him and at his finger and I chuckle. ‘God bless you, T…’ I move out of the room while I feel him watching me silently, unmoving…

What I did not see until Daylight Saving Time ended; morning horses, snorting and galloping along the edge of rugged fences; fat geese waddling and oblivious along the road’s edge in Hyland Park, and the glimmer of starlight fading quickly as sun rises over the Colgate Seminary tower.

As I drive, I prefer starlight with sleepy shadows and cozy dark and only my imagination of wilding horses and plumped feathers…

Whether or not this thing called ‘Time’ changes, bends or flattens out…as I remember the rattling of the house, the howling wind sweeping around the cul de sac, the bend in the shimmering windows…I am thankful for warm spaces.

I awoke and found the land changed; the view morphed. The house being built next to ours seems to have sprung up overnight and now we are surrounded. The land in reluctance has surrendered another plot and I assume the soil questions the ‘gifting’ of itself.

I rose and in the day’s journey I dusted the buffet belonging to my Grandmother; a piece of furniture more than one hundred years old and I wondered what this piece of lovely wood has witnessed. Wood and land, dust and soil and stone; watching humanity move and build and tear down and stomp around with passions and proclamations. They wait without comment for they were on the very tip of God’s hand during creation and they will cover us as God closes eyes and they observe our lives and decisions…and they wonder as we dust and dig and carry on with abandon…

I drove home on a lonely back road this afternoon. Had I not driven this way, I would have missed an encirclement of magnificent color. I rode through vast carpeted hills stuffed full with vermilion maples, golden oaks and rows of ruby and orange-rose sumac and smaller bushes nestled tightly like fat, satisfied bugs along the edges of stripped and harvested fields; the rainy air drenching everything in waves of umber and lemon wash, crimson leaves, apricot and peach curlings and orange and salmon brush.

I opened the car window and it smelled of pumpkins and Cortland apples and hay and mealy earth. Over the road width hung a light curtain, a stretched and elegant grey gauzey fog. The plowed fields were dark red and the road wound this way and that with nothing in sight save an Amish farm with a cart and horse and children playing before twilight

Driving the back road is risky; not one to be attempted once the sun has set. I slowed a bit, moving forward cautiously and then witnessed two deer. One larger, one smaller appeared suddenly with light trotting steps and they leapt gracefully across the road, jumping down into the gully on the left; a flash of white tail and they were gone in the foliage. They do not trust the road.

Had I not driven this lonely patch I would have missed the large white slab of cement; the end of an old barn jutting onto the edge of the front yard of an Amish home. I would have missed the two children darting and jumping. There was a thin blue-garbed girl with a white bonnet, wearing roller skates and spinning around in circles on the white surface. She played keep away from a younger child; a small boy who was dressed in a brown suit, matching brown hat and barefoot. He chased her gleefully with a stick; wobbling on his chubby feet as she skated away. They disappeared in a swirl of leaves and they were gone in my rear view mirror. They did not look my way. They do not trust the road.

The deer, our new neighbors, the children and I are on the same road; although strangers to each other. We wander, skate and wobble forward in a swirl of magnificent color, meeting only for a very brief moment under a darkening sky on a path we have reason to consider carefully, but within the care of the Creator who shakes the globe and mixes up the autumnal paints and lets the lemon brush fall where it may. There would have been no risk taking the direct way home, but with risk comes the richness of meandering and the rust of old skates and a russet rain over the hills where I nurture my sense of place.

The weather alters, flipping and flopping. Negative fifteen degrees wind chill cancels school. Two days later we are promised a balmy thirty-seven degrees and as the week rolls on…showers, heavy grey rain and the thermometer pushes the edge of fifty.

As the school year evolves; ebbing and flowing…summer skirts are quickly traded in for…not rain coats, not thick fleecy transitional jackets…no sweaters…rather, full strength and length winter coats. A mere fifty degrees with a raw autumn wind, a heavy rain, a brutal snowstorm with a winter advisory…and thick winter coats it is!

Observation; from the smallest tike in the pre-kindergarten room to the eldest care giver…there is no luxury. There are no varied seasonal changes of clothing. This is the struggling, poorer end of humanity. Transitional clothing is a middle class concept.

Cold or hot. Simplicity. Limited. And it rains…wetly with a swirly breeze. There are glimpses of what precipitated in the early autumn, what happens in mid-winter and what will occur before the end of March. After a few really cold months are completed…what then? Old worn out coats. Dirty coats.

There is a raggle, scrabble wetly soaked gang of kids awaiting entry in the school foyer. The orange autumn energy pours off them as steaming, cold rain dries off the sun baked leaves and the frozen lilac bushes in Highland Park or runs down the clogged and frozen gutters of Joseph and Clifford. Bright eyed angry enthusiasm about everything; they are open to anything…the good, the bad…the angry and the uprooted. This neighborhood band of Roma banters loudly, jostling each other while they wait; smacked down hard by family and street.

I tip toe away, vanishing down the length of the empty hallway, entering the silent elevator…listening to the clamor fade as the metal box ascends. It seems all my life that it rains and snows on Fridays…

All in all, a confusing week of learning for my students. We worked on symbols. One thought the Statue of Liberty was God. Another thought Buffalo was the name of our country. One inquired as to why God was always on sticks…(a crucifix). In the end, we all agreed that it was best to think before we spoke and that included Mrs. Algarin as well.

Lonesome train whistle somewhere in the night’s deepest heart, akin to a moment in Debussy’s Reverie…she silhouettes in the rocking chair whilst whispering down the pain of a child’s sore throat…the whistle mourns again, he’s leaving Ohio on the tracks to Chicago.

Third hour in the morning gloom. I hear the rumbling, agonizing train whistle…somewhere in the darkest aftermath of loss. The train runs on…but he has left the station.

Ground Hog Day…and what of it, really? I mean, really!

Old Man Winter, Lady Snow, Lord Wind and Sister Lake Effect toyed with us and found us wanting. They headed West to the political scene in Iowa, making mischief and sat down in the middle of the plains for high tea. ‘Pass the frost, please’ and ‘How delicious; layered permafrost with a fresh gropple topping’. ‘Would you pour then? Hmmm…steamed sleet with just a dollop of wind!’

I am so bored and so is Phil, our regional rodent. No snow, no sun…and yet, a warning shadow. Heading North today…toward the city by the lake, toward six more weeks of winter…then onward into Spring.

For now, Mr. Lightfoot’s ‘Song for a Winter’s Night’…set aside during warmer days, is still tucked away in my mind, lingering at the edge as leaves fall… reborn at the crisp edge of February when everything is frozen and sleeping under crystal. How could I have forgotten one of my favorites..? Our good neighbor to the North…

Welcome February…the shortest month. Rich with reds and pinks, rose petals and white lace…strawberry dipped chocolates…midnight wine goblets in heated restaurants. We listen to murmured chatter as we glance out frosted glass; knowing and feeling that despite many and varied bitter March gusts, February is winter’s farewell tip of the hat, the ice-wink…and the grand Cupid exit.

Another February slips on into the twelve month cycle of life…a month of pinks and creams, reds and rose striations…with a dash of black…