April does her thing; a muddy patch here, a small pink hyacinth there. As I drive away from the house in the early morning hours, I notice a huge goose standing on my roof. I’m not sure why he is there. Perhaps he listens for the lilting sounds of Billie Holiday from the evening before; the strains claiming that time goes by, as indeed it does. Perhaps he smells the redolent fragrance of thick Polish sausages; their smell wafting up the stairs and out on to the roof, where he stands stopped and waiting; watching.

The time has come and gone. Another season moves from winter into spring and I fear this large goose on the roof is either lost or confused, because April does her thing. It is shockingly cold this morning and it will be significantly warmer in a few hours. The ground by the edge of the house is moist and beckoning, desiring that some work be done. Two flowering Purple Prince crab apple trees have been ordered and are waiting to be picked up, but this is not the week to plant. The ground is still cold.

In the late afternoon, upstairs in the rooms which lie underneath the rafters and the light footprints of the morning goose, I open two windows for the first time in months and hang up some freshly laundered clothing. Of course I have a dryer. On some days however, I prefer the motion of lifting and hanging and smoothing my hands over the cloth; making sure it is perfect. It takes time. Of course it takes time. But the joy is in the process and it settles my mind.

There awaits almond coffee with heavy cream and honey, along with cherry cordial cake for an afternoon snack. There might also be thick slices of potato cheddar chive toast with squares of real butter. This life is too short for bad coffee, plain oatmeal and rooms where the windows are never opened.

There will be days for plain things but not today; not while April does her thing and not for a home where a large goose takes a pause to stand on my roof to watch for songs, to smell sausage, to look toward Lake Ontario where the rest of the early spring geese have already gone…

10:23am…I hear a mad, rapid fluttering at the reading room window. I suspect the robins are back at it…again. Round three. I take a final swig of cooling coffee and venture onto the porch with broom in hand. Again. The porch is luminous with sunshine. I look around. The chimes are quietly churning in the wind and the large window ledge is strangely empty. Not a twig or piece of nesting detritus in sight. I look around, surprised.

Where are they? It appears they stopped by only to say hello, to flutter around the edge of the ledge and then…gone as quickly as they came. I look up and watch a steady stream of high flying birds, robins and maybe others…heading into the variable winds…in the direction of the tree line opposite the house.

They are off to mourn the cathedral…

Oh, Notre-Dame…my heart. Brick upon brick, life upon life, century upon century…and the spire, that spire. You are burning and with the conflagration goes the best, the absolute best of what humanity can be…

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 curling 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 rip the whole thing out and throw it on the compost. It was early morning 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. 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 and wistful cry outside the window…the rain fell more heavily…’

We are living in what I call ‘outrageous grey’. Countless days this winter and spring 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’. Maybe I should pour vitamin D drops directly into their soil.

I look tentatively outside. I fear being dive bombed by angry robins. 8am. All is quiet on the porch front. I notice there is one weak strand of nesting material hanging over the lip of the window and white breakfast remains splattered all over one of the chairs. An intentional bird salvo if ever I saw one. They’re out there somewhere. Perhaps it’s just too grey and cold for them to build today.

I remove the nesting strand with a swipe from my broom and walk to the end of the porch where I grab hold of the wind chimes and rattle them as a call to arms. Round two…

The robins have waited until today to make their move. My porch is their Canaan, the promised land with a large lipped shelf…a comfortable flat window overhang with plenty of space to build. ‘No’ I say.

Their attack is orderly. Mid morning, there is nothing. By 2pm they have begun to build in two places. My husband goes out and removes everything. Within two hours, I look out and discover they are at it again. I venture out with a broom and a bottle of cleaner to clean off the windows. I wipe things down. I hang up chimes and sweep up the porch, lugging heavy Adirondack chairs around. It’s a lot of work trying to keep something so small away from us. I turn on the porch light and lock the door firmly and tightly. Round one…

It’s rich indeed…that moment when the person who has snubbed or ignored you for weeks in the hallway for 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 settle in my chair and think…’I win’. Rich indeed…

‘So all else having failed, they naturally formed a committee’. She finished reading the page and thumped the book down on the table. She stretched her arms high over her head and announced to her husband, ‘And that my dear, is the problem with most situations in this old world’. She was just warming up, and he knew it.

He glanced up at her from over the rim of his glasses and nodded. She sighed and sat back against the cushions, dropping her arms into her lap. She yawned and then began to talk. ‘Do you remember that school librarian from a few years back? The one who was so incredibly cranky all the time?’ He watched her from the edge of his newspaper. ‘Yes, what about her?’ Leaning forward with a conspiratorial look, her eyes gleaming, she said, ‘Well, I always suspected that what she really wanted was a library full of books and empty of children’.

He put the paper down, took off his glasses and rubbed his forehead. ‘Well, who wouldn’t actually, truth be told? Some of your kids…?’ His voice trailed off, not wanting to dredge up ‘work talk’. She grinned. ‘No, no, you’re right in that case. Anyone would have been cranky. Permanently’. She looked at him and he smiled back, both of them quietly recalling older conversations with colleagues about failed urban education policies, the history of race in Rochester and the intractable Board of Education which drove everyone mad. But those were discussions for other times. Not today.

She continued, ‘But guess what I found out about her after she retired?’ He played along, listening in hope that the conversation would eventually land somewhere and preferably quickly. He stretched out one leg, then the other. ‘What did you find out about her?’ She propped up an errant cushion. She waved her right arm to add emphasis as she spoke. ‘She had a degree in school committee structure!’ He was silent. ‘Don’t you see?’ She surged on, making her point. ‘She went to school to learn how to organize and lead school committees and somehow ended up working in the library. Absurd! A library! An elementary library contains books AND children and to be honest she did not really want to work with children. She wanted perfect book shelving and the power to be able to give directions to her committees about running schools. The children were a sorry secondary afterthought, attached to the school. There were no committees for her, just real live children!’

‘Ah!’ he said. He shook his head and looked out the window. She ran her fingers through her hair, stood up and moved the ottoman away from the couch edge. She paused a brief moment before picking up the coffee mugs and empty pastry plates. The aroma of the orange chocolate brew lingered over the edges of the glassware, and she took a deep breath. ‘Lovely’ she exclaimed. The smell followed her as she headed into the kitchen. One pink linen napkin fell off the plate and onto the floor. She sighed, bending down to retrieve it and spoke again as she stood up. ‘I find it really funny’ she said.

‘What?’ he raised his voice because he had returned to his newspaper as she exited the room. ‘I said’ she began again… ‘It’s funny; not funny as in strange but funny as in humorous’. She turned toward the sink, shaking the napkin gently over the stainless steel. ‘I mean, the whole thing, the whole district…it’s what I just read about now. The response to deep abiding failure, is always the same. Form a committee. Imagine obtaining a degree in school committee structure? When did a committee ever accomplish anything?’ She snorted in derision.

Her husband came into the kitchen. ‘You know what I think is really true?’ He approached her and as he opened his arms to embrace her, he said simply, ‘I think you think it’s funny, not because it is funny but because at a deeper level, you yourself are very sad. That’s what I think’.

She stepped back slightly from him and looked at his face intently. ‘Yes’ she answered simply. She looked out the window. ‘I am sad. I feel the same way I do when it snows in the month of April. It’s a long term betrayal, something which can’t be shaken’. She sighed. ‘It’s the same way I felt when I saw a classmate’s recent obituary. He was only 54 years old. I remembered he would not share his Green Hornet coloring book with me in kindergarten. That’s all I remembered. His photo moved me. He looked so old, so completely unrecognizable to me in that picture and that made me sad. Someone who is only 54 years old should still be recognizable’.

‘Yes’ he responded gently. ‘It’s the sort of sad I feel when I awaken and know that I missed hearing the early morning rain. It’s a sad shame to miss the rain’. Then, to reassure her he said, ‘It’s as bad as forming a committee, actually..’

If a child has made it to 5th or 6th grade and cannot read, then EVERYTHING should stop. The mandates, the schedule, the district’s ever changing requirements and strategies, the protocol, the bureaucracy, the entire system from stem to stern should stop blathering and playing duck and cover.

All energies should be focused on finding a real life solution for the students. Unless the reading issue and positive cognitive and/or emotional issues are resolved, nothing moves forward.

‘A mile wide and an inch deep’ does not constitute an education. ‘Honest’ conversations don’t fix anything unless they are…well…honest.

But, now we are entering the silly season also known as TESTING. There are NYS alternate assessments and NYS ELA paper tests. There is NYSESLAT starting on April 17 and ending on May 26. In the middle of all that we squeeze the NYS math test, both paper based and computer based. There is AP testing. There is IREADY diagnostic testing. Then we jump into the Common Formative Assessments. NYS Science Performance Assessments follow. IStation rolls along…and on and on it goes. So…I guess we won’t worry too much about reading…

‘It’s all fun and games until someone loses an eye’. Who among us did not at one time or another hear that warning?

An eye? Of all things which might happen, I question threatening the loss of an eye. Perhaps it stemmed from an Old Testament reference to Samson, who lost his eyes in a very unpleasant manner. In that story, not one eye but both orbs were lost and there was definitely no ‘fun and games’ involved. Perhaps this parental threat was a vague reference to past medieval horrors and tortures? Perhaps they just repeated what their parents and neighbor had said? But I digress.

I managed to jam a knitting needle a half inch into the back of my throat. That was an odd day. It was a long time ago, but it happened and there were no eyes involved, expect those of the wide eyed family doctor who looked at me and asked, ‘You did what now?’ I answered simply as I sat in his office, ‘I jabbed a knitting needle into my throat. It was an accident’. Perhaps that was an unnecessary explanation.

Our taciturn doctor with the New Jersey accent, who thought he had seen it all, sighed, leaned back in his squeaky leather chair and said, ‘Well, there is a first time for everything’. I looked at him. He was intimidating. ‘It was an accident’ I repeated, unnecessarily.

I was rewarded for my efforts with a week’s worth of antibiotics, a period of difficult swallowing, a small bumpy scar way at the back of my palate, which eventually disappeared…and I have not engaged in any more knitting.

My brother, as a toddler, while running around our church nursery one Sunday with a wooden block in his mouth, fell flat on his face and jammed the block into the back of his throat. As he was still a very small child and incapable of explaining in any sort of articulate manner that which he had done, there were some screechingly painful moments when later that day he was given a bottle of warm milk. There followed another trip to see our family doctor.

In time, as we grew, there were a series of unfortunate incidents; sprained ankles, singed braids (birthday candles can be surprisingly dangerous and unreliable), some broken bones and some spectacular spills, including what can only be explained as a ‘Superman dive’ over an open dishwasher door. It was breathtaking.

There were never any eyes involved in these missteps. Nothing was gouged out, poked out, no one was blinded or irreparably scarred for life. ‘It’s all fun and games until someone sticks a knitting needle up one’s throat’…

I’m on hold…breathlessly awaiting the long promised connection to a live person who can possibly connect me to another live person who will set up a delivery time for a large item which has been sitting in Buffalo for more than a week now.

Normally, I hate being subjected to inane ‘on hold Muzak’…trapped by a slaughtered version of a Beatles song, a well watered down/cleaned up version of a Rod Stewart tune (sans lyrics) or an attempt to ‘bee bop’ a sacred hymn like Amazing Grace into a road trip kind of a sing-a-long.

Today I am pleasantly surprised at hearing the gorgeous tones of a Chopin prelude playing liltingly on my phone…minor key, skilled playing…slow movement…European angst with dark chords…gathering clouds…and then it occurs to me this might not be good. The invasion of Poland. The funeral march. Death.

I’m going to be on hold for eternity…