We are enduring 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. Instead, 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.

A call to arms…a farewell to arms…

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…

Summation of my week: overheard in a Kindergarten class…’I’ve got shark nails’. (Sharp). With a third grader…’Could we have a salami in Rochester?’ (Tsunami).

One of my second grade cherubs wrote me a note, ‘Dear Teacher…I want to try to do my best because I want to be god’. (Good).

A very tall order indeed. Things to think about on a grey late winter afternoon…

I leaned through the open car door window and said to Lolly girl who was grinning and waving from her car seat, ‘Girl! We’re in the middle of a pandemic. What do you think?’

She leaned back, all curly locks shaking in every direction and screechy laughed. She pointed at me directly and continued to suck on her single soggy French fry.

It’s good to be a mere 15 months old…

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 siting in Buffalo for 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 aggressively ‘bee bop’ a sacred hymn like Amazing Grace into a road trip kind of a sing-a-long.

Today, I’m pleasantly surprised at hearing the gorgeous tones of a Chopin prelude playing liltingly on my phone…minor key, 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…

It is not snow. It is powdered sugar.

We are living on top of a very large doughnut.