Monday Morning Musing: Snowfall and Spring Fever

The weather is not playing nicely. This week, in Columbus, we've seen everything from 72 degrees to 28 degrees. Bruce keeps putting our beloved olive tree (who we've dubbed "Olive"; clever, right?) out onto the porch and then bringing her back inside, apologizing along the way.

On the warm day, I absolutely could not concentrate. We ate lunch outside, we walked farther than absolutely necessary to get to our destination. Getting to experience that day made the cold ones that followed harder to take. Our dear Bob finally said, with the wisdom that often comes from ninety years on this earth: "Forget the weather. Just go out and enjoy the day together."

Our children and their beloveds on the west coast are also experiencing unruly weather. There's torrential rain in Los Angeles, snow in Gig Harbor, and in Portland (OR), record breaking snowfall - 10 inches in about six hours!

The atmosphere reminds us that it is actually humanity and our quest for progress that hasn't played nicely. And we are complicit with our two cars and our frequent flying. Maybe this is something we need to reconsider.

Barbara Kingsolver, who is both a novelist and a poet, writes beautifully about how a snow day impacts us. In honor of our dear ones who are still trying to warm up and dig out:

Snow Day

The blizzard came and went last night as we slept.

The woods were first to wake up

as their own black-and white- photograph.

Next a rabbit: revealed

as the history of its many

indecisions along the lane.

Black ponies on the hill:

round-bellied shadows of creatures

that stood just yesterday

in their own breakfast.

The pasture: a toboggan slope.

Children who wait like fence posts,

on other days, for the school bus

now howl their demon love for speed,

calling me to join them.

Nothing is what it was.

The mailbox sports a white toupee,

compensating for a certain

internal emptiness.

The mail won't come today.

All professions called on account of weather.

Every identity canceled. I have no choice

but to set down these words,

wrap my long limbs in the cloak

of a perfect disguise,

walk down the lane,

steal into life as a ten-year-old

leaving footprints: traces of my escape.