Ode To Spring

All the flowers in all the pots on my porch are unfurling their tight-fisted little buds, like a toddler who finally releases her hold on mommy's finger.

We brew a jug of sun tea in the garden for two days, sweeten the warm amber liquid after a game of thunder on the basketball court. Served over ice it's the best thing all day.

A week ago I was skiing in Tahoe, at seven thousand feet above sea level, fresh powder from an early morning snowfall. Ease, quiet, solitude, focus, bliss. A prayer. May I bring that mountain meditation home with me, snap it into it's rightful place in the puzzle of my hectic life. Let be be all there needs to be.

Kids take St. Patrick's Day very seriously. I completely forget about the requisite green excitement, so thrilled am I at seeing my first paid articles in print. What surprises me most is Nate, fifteen-year-old punk kid, cultivator of nonchalance, in bright green sneakers and dark green bandanna, waiting for me in the morning with an elfish grin and pinched fingers.

I lay on the trampoline at school, reading "The Scarlet Letter," glad I'm the teacher and not the student wrestling this heavy prose to the ground for the first time. I'm tempted to hurl the black novel into the mint-laden grass and drift off to sleep. I wonder if Cami and Jora will actually read the assigned fifty pages by tomorrow. I am almost sure I wouldn't have when I was in high school.

Boy it sure feels good to break out the sandals! The old crusty ones still bearing the outline of last summer's escapades, the spiffy new red ones I bought in the mall at Christmastime, the new-to-me baby blue pumps I found in the thrift store the other day, a steal at five bucks.

On the basketball court I balk at my winter body. Pale legs, with hair grown dark during these months of hibernation. Softer around the belly. Motivation kicks in: I'm ready to tone and strengthen, to shed winter's insulation. Can't wait to swim and run barefoot through the grass, and watch my nose freckles multiply.

So we change the time, robbing from morning's sleeping hours to pay afternoon's play-time hours. I've been tired all week long, grumpily snoozing through the alarm, lazily marveling at the endless warm afternoons. I think about Kurt Vonnegut's Tralfamadorians (if you haven't yet read "Slaughterhouse Five," trust me, you won't regret it), who pity the human concept of chronological time, in which moments are over and gone forever. To them, "all moments, past, present, and future, always have existed, always will exist."