Scenes from Zoom: a set of dresser drawers with handles…two bare feet waving back and forth in front of a floor fan…one child snacking…another child practicing raising his left eyebrow up and down…life on the underside of a bunk bed…in another home; a place I shall never visit.

I dreamt of Norway again and was suddenly on that train because someone mentioned Norway and I went willingly. And you were there, of course. Opening and closing the wallet. Opening and closing your wallet, convincing us to eat reindeer meat with red peppers and we could barely do it. But we ate our portion.

And then, ‘Look, over there! Look!’ And we shoved and scrambled over to the window and there in the middle of a brilliantly sage and kiwi grassy meadow, rising in sunshine mist by the fjords…those stunning fjords…there was a child standing and waving madly. A blond headed cherub in a bright red woolen sweater just standing and watching; waving to the moving strangers on the black smoking train. ‘Wave!’ you said excitedly and we did…waving and stretching out to him just before our train slid into the mountains and I knew then as I know now…it was a snapshot I could not take.

I will never see that child again. And you are gone, for now. Your wallet is closed and stored somewhere. But that is temporary, of course and the train is still running.

Now I’m in the Empire State and I would rather be on that line between Oslo and Bergen, waving madly at the child I can not see…

While Rome is burning all around me, I might as well toast marshmallows.

Carpe Diem…

The entire day…all day…has been taken up with all things ‘lawn’. Pulling the John Deere Tractor out of the shed. Discovering there was ‘fixing’ to do. Two phone calls; English and Spanish, three trips to Home Depot, 1 trip to Lowes, manual reading, purchasing gas, discovering a missing chisel on the front seat of the truck. Apparently we have been sitting on top of the chisel for a time now.

More reading, changing oil, trips to the basement, testing a battery; we reach the twilight hour of 6:30pm…the lawn is not mowed and there is a deafening silence in the backyard next to the shed where Eli is tinkering.

For dinner I have had…cheese.

This is what comes of leaving the house…

It was that old adage which caught her up on that rainy afternoon. ‘A fool and his money is soon parted’.

And so it was, she thought. She looked at the ledger in front of her, lying open and exposed on the table. Truth.

It was a poignant…lovely example of the human condition. She stretched a bit and yawned. ‘We are all in various stages of foolishness, it would seem…’

It happens every year. Every. Year.

Halfway through the lesson, a student looks at me and asks, ‘Hey! Are you a teacher?’

My standard go-to response is, ‘That’s what they tell me’.

This always seems to satisfy them…and we move on.

My one wish during this winter season is that my little student (whereabouts unknown since January) would land safely somewhere and would encounter a system, a district, a neighbor, a police officer…someone who would insist against all odds that this child be given the respect deserved; that school for this child would start again and that what was lost would be found. Perhaps our educational system will grind forward, lurching and complaining, weighed down heavily with all the students it can not seem to find the time nor resources to educate.

God bless and keep you my little friend, D. You have been deeply betrayed by adults in charge…those leading the bumbling systems we pay for.

Godspeed…

Sunshine, glorious sun streams 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 sun and think about New York…those blistering sidewalks in August, the surging life steam rising off the walls. Eating an early dinner at The Heights on Broadway or feeling the energy at the dreadful time of 4am as we watch workers hustle to load supplies into a diner…they disappear through a rectangular hole in the sidewalk…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 and the large white truck lurches out fast at an angle. They’re gone. It’s 4:45am.

I wonder when we will go back.

I open my eyes and look out from the porch to the street. A few neighbors walk by, walking dogs, waving cautiously…people we don’t know, but we sense we are all in this together. ‘The ghosts are coming out’ he states simply. ‘The ghosts?’ I ask. He responds, ‘All the people we have never seen’.

The wind picks up again, slamming the chimes against the painted posts. It’s so fierce.

Blowing ghosts and viruses around…

What I think I hear is, ‘You’re dreaming with pregnant frogs’. I ask, ‘What?’ Eli replies, ‘You’re dreaming with pregnant frogs’. I pause and consider this ugly image. My silence spurs him on with a much needed clarification. ‘You just told me you are having crazy dreams and troubled mind trauma because of all of this virus nonsense; this Covid. I told you what we say in Spanish about that sort of thing. You are dreaming with pregnant frogs’.

I think about it and decide that this is a perfect description of all things virus related. Consider the image of ‘icky’ things dashing around in all directions and not running well because these dreadful ‘icky’ things are fat full with fear and anxiety and more parts and bits of ‘icky’ things.

I am not a fan of amphibians or reptiles for that matter. I am not a fan of this virus. The ‘ick’ factor surges strongly…

What she really wanted to do was sit silently and listen to the rain. The air was thick and grey with mist and wet earth and somewhere downstairs there lingered smells from last night…cooked herring and the lavender candle lit and smoldering as an offset to the curdling ocean smell.

The edges of the school year were beginning to curl and dry out…but the roots were still slightly damp and clinging. She wanted to tip the whole thing out and throw it on compost.

It was early still; the solitary indication that anyone was still alive in the neighborhood was the sound of one car, rising like a weighted vessel at sea…slowly around the corner, the gentle rocking sound of brakes sighing in the rain…full stop at the corner…a slight merging left as the car righted itself…the soft engine surging as the hill rose…large splashing and then the wide puddle by the mailbox lay breeched and drained…the slight squish of crunching gravel and tar…and gone…deafening silence. The lights across the street flickered off…there was a burst of rain…a soaking sheet at the edge of the porch. Even the birds were quiet. The silence was silver. Lovely.

‘Miss! Miss! You’re muted. I can’t hear you!’ She sighed. What she really, really wanted to do was to sit, immobile…watching the rain…’Miss! Now your camera is off’…the mourning dove cooed, a faint wistful cry outside the window…the rain fell more heavily…