On a snowy and shockingly cold morning in April, I chose to take the day off rather than be forced to provide teaching services to a dreadful classroom in our building, while abandoning mandated language services to my own students. Forced substitute teaching.

My body, soul and spirit toerates this outrage no longer.

State testing began today and the head of the school was away on a cruise. Subbing disorder was assigned to underlings and teachers left behind in the cold.

Exceptional optics. Wisdom beyond measure…

I commenced reading a book about the Irish potato famine and something akin to Irish anger rose up in me. I remembered my own heritage and gradually equated the gross incompetence of educational systems and vacationing bureaucrats to the landed gentry in Ireland and the bumbling English…the fools who allowed millions to starve.

Rebellion surged within me and I resolved to make a crockpot of potato soup; a salient answer to anger and plunging temperatures and as I had no fresh potatoes, I opened the stuffed freezer and pulled out a sack of frozen ‘Potatoes O’Brien’.

Indeed.

God is in His Heaven…

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 neighborhood cat wanders over and plops down on one of the porch chairs, stretching and settling in to watch the street with yellow, sleepy eyes.

The windows…dearest hope for balmier temperatures…the windows are…open. At long last, the air moves freely in the house. The last autumnal vestiges of cinnamon and pumpkin nutmeg are swirling out, replaced with rose, sage, iced strawberry and vanilla lavender.

The sun shone longer today and I went shopping and bought flower seeds and came home to find my husband sitting quietly on the porch, the neighbor’s cat long gone. This is a tremendously good sign, this man sitting on the green Adirondack chair.

Suddenly, the low mournful sound of a single goose wafts through the screen. He is lost. The northerly winged crowds flew by without him…a number of days earlier and he is on his own. I listen, hearing him emit another mournful honk…and he is gone. Maybe he’s headed toward the lake. It’s fast approaching twilight and I do not know where he has vanished.

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

Best quote of the day: talking with an elderly neighbor this afternoon, a retired teacher.

Upon crossing herself she said, ‘I would testify in a court of law…truly, the lowest form of life is an 8th grade boy…’

So, there’s that…

I received a text on my phone early this morning: ‘Good morning Mark. Adam and I stopped by and dried out the rear lot camera and checked the other two’.

‘Please let us know if you have further difficulty…Charles’.

I do not know Mark, Adam or Charles. I am unclear as to what a rear lot camera might be. I may have further difficulties, but I suspect Charles will not be able to help me.

I hope these three people have a successful day…whoever they are…

Wherever they find themselves…

I leaned through the open car window and said to my little one who was cheerily grinning and waving from her car seat, ‘Girl, we’re in the middle of a pandemic. What do you think?’

She leaned back and screeched happily with laughter, pointed at me and continued to suck on her soggy salty single French fry.

It’s good to be 15 months old…

Before noon…and the air smells like snow and Sangria. My windows are open, letting in baby lush spring air…blowing up from the South, struggling over muddy ruts and thawing fields…eager to make an impression on rooftops opening reluctantly to receive the sun.

Behold…four large geese perch quietly atop one of the newest built houses. The wind ripples their feathers and they watch the slow line of winding traffic exit the development.

A new neighbor, once a stranger to me…another fragile human walking this earth’s road…waves heartily and heads over to chat. He holds out his hands, wincing as he shows me his fresh, raw blisters. The winter has rendered his hands soft and unused to outdoor labor.

We are joined for a moment in the common thread of sympathy, a discussion about the drainage pond and the returning geese, the rare marriage which lasts over 50 years, his stint in the US Navy.

I am eager to be on my way now.

The wind is nipping at my heels and calling me down the hill…and over the dale on this Maundy Thursday, toward the death of winter and into all the promises that this new life holds…

‘Tis April again, with snow on the ground, and the birds singing low at the sill. ‘Tis April again, the air is blue black and there’s ice at the top of the hill.

But…’tis April once more and the chill at the door will be gone by the end of this day.

For the moon has turned over and the yard breathes of clover and daisies are soon on the way…

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 while he attempts to maintain a conversation with me…and as I witness more wet grounds splattered on the kitchen floor and up the wall by the garbage bin, I say the only thing that I can think to say.

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

The look on the head secretary’s face when I told her I was going to hop the counter instead of being buzzed in to the main office…simply marvelous!

I knew I would never do it. She knew I would never do it; nor can I do actually physically do it.

But for a split second…I ruled the world.

This afternoon…the little one coughed, raised his hand and when called on said simply, ‘Miss, I have a hair ball’.

My response…’I can’t take care of that right now’…back to work.

Can’t make this stuff up.