Pandemic homeschool memories: Antonio learned to thread a needle this morning and then sewed up several holes in some of his stuffed toys in the afternoon.

On Zoom later during the day: two students have taken their district chrome books and have left our snowy meadows to return to Puerto Rico for good.

We are sitting in snow. They are zooming in from the beach. Palm trees are swaying in the salty breeze.

I am not quite sure how state testing will be successfully administered…

Other than that, all else having failed, we naturally formed a committee…

Thoughts on April:

The reversal of expectations; grey winds with rain smatterings clash around the edge of the house while the porch chimes rage in metal fury. It’s April! It’s April! The chimes are upset. They try flying separate of each other but this gale forces them together. Their pipes, smashed into each other, are now hopelessly tangled up in black string. I consider them; these helpless chime children. This will require a ladder, stretching and pulling and a lengthy time sitting on the couch carefully unwinding each black twine, silver pipe and wooden weight. Not today.

I go back into the house and standing in the warm kitchen, I consider strawberries and a croissant; a medium coffee…lighter breakfast fare as it is April, after all. It’s April!

I hear the roar of the wind, watch the massacre of rain all over the windows. The birds fly slightly sideways in the air. No strawberries and sunlight. It’s time for a breakfast re-group…hot buttered garlic toast, dark chocolate coffee, the kind which places a wild ‘ping’ in your head and a lurch in one’s chest; laced with thick cream.

Fruit and sunshine can wait. I’m back in the throes of autumn; amber and butter and lux and gold; cheese and bisque and the heavier spoons…

It is rich indeed…that moment when the person who has snubbed or ignored you for weeks in the hallway (reasons unknown)…rounds the corner and greets you with a smile and a ‘Good morning’ while instantly realizing I wasn’t the person to whom that smile and greeting should have been directed.

But my nuance radar is up and I’m quicker. I look away before it can all be taken back. Or perhaps it was a dream.

But either way, I’m in my office and as I settle in my chair, I think…’I win’.

Rich indeed…

Overheard on Zoom…’Turn your camera on. No! No, I don’t want to see your ceiling. Lower your camera so I can see you. I want to see your face so I know you are paying attention. Okay. Thank you’.

‘Finish the paragraph about whales. No. No, it’s not ‘who’…it’s ‘wha’…no, we’re not going to end the paragraph by saying the whale is going to eat all the people…no. No!’

“I don’t want to see your ceiling…’

We are living in what I call outrageous grey. Countless days this winter and spring, endless hours of grey and slate and charcoal and lead and concrete.

I look at my potted dahlias sitting obediently in the window, doing what they have been instructed to do; reach for the sun! Higher! The package of seeds reads: dahlias thrive in six to eight hours of direct sunlight. Direct greying air pours in through the glass. Maybe I shall pour vitamin D drops into their faltering soil.

I step tentatively outside onto our porch. I fear being dive bombed by angry robins; those miscreants who have been busy building nests and forts on top of my large window ledge. 8am. All is quiet along the front edge of the house. There is one weak strand of nesting material hanging over the lip of the window and…a cascading shower of white breakfast remains all over one of the chairs and flowered cushion. A bird salvo.

They’re out there somewhere. Perhaps it’s just too grey and cold for them to build today. I swipe down the few strands of stems from off the ledge, remove the mess from the edge of the broom and stomp up to the door, not before stopping to grasp and rattle the wind chimes as a call to arms.

Round two…

When the cathedral burned…

Oh, Notre-Dame…my heart. Brick upon brick, life upon life, century upon century…and the spire, that spire.

You are burning…burning…and with the conflagration goes the best, the absolute best of what humanity can be…

10:28am…I hear a mad, rapid fluttering at the reading room window. I suspect the robins are back at it.

I take a final swig of cooling coffee and venture onto the porch with broom in hand. The porch is lit up with sun. The chimes are quietly churning in the wind and the window ledge is strangely empty. Not a twig or piece of nesting detritus in sight. I look around. Where are they?

It appears then that the robins stopped by our porch only to say hello, to flutter around the edge of the ledge…and then…are gone as quickly as they came.

The sound is distant, far above, a gentle flapping with purpose.

I look up and observe a steady stream of high flying birds, robins and maybe many others…heading into winds…ascending together in the direction of the tree line opposite the house.

They are off to mourn the cathedral…

When we lived side by side with Covid…

Pandemic thoughts: how is it possible to have seven…(7)…yes, seven different sizes of zip lock bags in seven separate boxes? On one shelf? In one kitchen pantry?

Seven.

Methinks my husband is to blame…

As I look down and see my husband’s white sock covered with spilled coffee grounds…and as I look up and see him holding the coffee filter somewhat askew…and as I witness more wet grounds on the kitchen floor and wall by the garbage bin, I say the only thing I can say…

‘Step away from the kitchen, sir…step AWAY from my kitchen…’

Listening by the gravesite to his ‘Fugue for a Party’…performed brilliantly at Princeton University Chapel by our family friend Daniel Fortune.

The cemetery is greening and quiet. The organ is blazing. A bird flutters and chirps.

All will be well…

The seasons are in that strange colliding space now…with the first tentative sounds of crickets, new born and desperate…trying out the colder air, chirping weakly at the windows.

The windows…oh, the dearest hope filled celebration. The windows are…open. At long last, the air moves freely once again in the house. The last autumnal vestiges of cinnamon are swirling around and out, replaced with rose, sage, iced strawberry.

The sun shone longer today and I went shopping and bought flower seeds and came home to find my husband on the porch. A tremendously good sign.

Suddenly, the low mournful sound of a single goose wafts through the screen door. He is lost. The northerly winged crowds flew by without him…days earlier. I hear him and then he’s gone; headed toward the lake possibly.

It’s already dark. I don’t know.

I do know I have new seeds and cans of almond spray paint for a door wreath…and I have crickets and mud and open windows…