I used to think some things were odd; the woman standing at the corner of Central Avenue and North Clinton dressed in a heavy winter coat, a wool cap and boots…when the temperature is close to 80 muggy degrees. I used to think that odd.

At that particular corner, she’s standing only a few short blocks from where a specialty clothing factory tailors $2,000 plus suits…worn by businessman in Manhattan. The divergent paths will never cross…the over dressed woman who waves an illegible placard as she scuttles across North Clinton heading in the general direction of the train station…and the canyons of Manhattan. That’s odd.

But it’s no longer odd to me.

I used to say that ‘our students have no transitional clothing; going from winter coats and boots to t-shirts and flip flops’. Nothing in between. They endure a 4 season world with a 2 season wardrobe. Winter or summer. Black or white. A crumpled placard or a $2,000 suit.

To live in the middle, to thrive within nuances is an unheard of luxury.

The middle should be a safe place, but it’s not. Now that’s odd…

I just scanned a fashion magazine advertisement. Fashion. I lost my way temporarily.

Apparently, this season’s hottest accessory is the clavicle. I’ve had one of those for 61 years. Most likely I will have one until I die, regardless of fashion trending.

Rejoicing in the knowledge that I can depend implicitly on wisdom from this particular industry.

In the middle of a lesson today, a chubby five year old piped up, ‘Hey! Good news!’

I stopped and asked, ‘What is the good news?’ He responded, ‘I saw you today when I was waiting on my bus!’

We all agreed it was good news and we all laughed.

Back to farm animals…such is kindergarten.

Memories of Covid…

I’m marking time today in a different way. It is a slow slog. Every hour is a new normal after twenty two years of the same halls, the same corners and the same processes.

The Coronavirus has dropped a smart bomb into my solid set of systems, ways of being, places of buying and eating and roads on which I drove. It’s a great reduction and we are in the sauce for now.

Usually my nature, my culture, my surroundings look outward, forward…comfortable in moveable and continual movement. Even in stillness and in quieter days there existed the motion and the push and promise of even more movement.

It’s all sort of dribbling off and grinding down and sideways right now. ‘Maybe there will be an extension, a waiver, a check…remote learning. What are we going to do?’

My neighborhood is very quiet. Very still.

Today it shall be cupboards then, I guess. All my cupboards will be cleaned.

And then, I will look for something else…

The emotion of smell…for the first time in more than 50 years, Eli has found a pizzeria (Nino’s Pizzeria at 1330 Culver Road) where ‘inside the pizzeria it smells like it did when I was only 8 years old’…

I did not know my husband when he was 8 years old. I was busy building my own cell memory collection of smells…melting blue moon ice cream on the floor of the car, wind whipped flax and wheat spreading along the edges of quiet highways in South Dakota, the smell of deep, deep well water…green bath soap and the quiet perfume of lilacs spreading in spring dirt…

I was irritated. I saw the clunky rocks still needing to be cleared in my freshly graded yard. There were un-swept crumbs on my kitchen floor and they bothered me. Not all the dishes sparkled. I sighed at the sight of the unwieldy white snowflakes drifting down over clean curbs and black lampposts. It was too, too much.

And…I noticed that there was rust on the door of my Jeep, that faithful servant of a quarter million miles and I had to go to my job and I had things to do and days and days in which to do them.

And…I listened to the car radio and there was a sixteen year old boy and his mother for whom he had struggled to buy passage from Africa to Europe…fleeing a murderous people and they were thrown off a boat in stormy seas and they drowned.

In my mind I keep trying to picture them as surviving but I know that we have all lost dreadfully…dreadfully.

I will walk out to my yard soon and stoop, bending over to pick up errant stones and throw them into a waiting and sturdy cardboard box.

And…I will be silent…

Sunshine, glorious sunshine streaming over the front yard. It’s only 53 degrees but it feels like a slice of Heaven. We curl up in jeans and hoodies on the porch…the wind chimes bang wildly, madly in the sunny wind. He’s listening to Salsa Vieja…a song about having fun in New York in the summer.

I close my eyes in the cold sun and think about New York…those blistering sidewalks in August, the surging life steam rising off the walls, at an early dinner at The Heights on Broadway or at 4am as workers hustle to load supplies into a diner…they disappear through a rectangular hole in the sidewalk…pitching, running up and down stairs at a 90 degree angle. Moving, lifting, swinging, shouting, sweating heavily, so fast, so fast…slamming the heavy metal doors…boom. In a flash, they climb in the idling vehicle parked up on the sidewalk and in a New York minute the truck pulls out into traffic at a charging roaring angle. They’re gone. It’s 4:45am.

I wonder when I will go back.

I open my eyes. A few neighbors stroll by, walking dogs, waving cautiously to us seated on the porch…people we don’t know, but we are all in this together.

‘The ghosts are coming out’ he states simply. ‘The ghosts?’ I ask. ‘All the people we have never seen’.

The wind picks up again, slamming the chimes against the posts. It’s so fierce. Blowing ghosts and viruses all around…

Summation of my week so far: overheard in a Kindergarten class…’I’ve got shark nails (sharp)’. With a third grader…’Could we have a salami in Rochester?’ (meaning Tsunami). Yes to the salami, no to the Tsunami…although with our district, anything is possible.

With my second graders, written to me in a note…’Dear Teacher, I want to try to do my best because I want to be god’ (good). This is a very tall order.

Things to think about on a sunny and cold Tuesday afternoon…

How is it possible to have seven…(7)…seven…different sizes of zip lock bags in seven separate boxes…in one pantry?

Methinks my husband is to blame…

The reversal of expectations; grey winds with weighty rain smatterings clash around the edge of the house while the porch chimes rage in metal fury. It’s April! It’s April! They are upset. They try flying separate of each other but the gales force them together. Their pipes, all smashed into each other are now hopelessly tangled.

I consider them as I would helpless children. This will require a ladder, significant stretching and a lengthy time on the couch away from the winds, unwinding each black string, silver pipe and wooden weight. Not today.

I think about strawberries and a croissant; a medium coffee…light breakfast fare as it is April after all. It’s April!

But I hear the roar of the wind, watch the massacre of rain all over the windows. The birds fly slightly sideways in the air. Breakfast plans change. Now I crave hot, buttered garlic toast, dark chocolate coffee, the kind placing a wild ‘ping’ in my head and a lurch in my chest; laced with thick cream.

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