The house was surrounded by fog today and the ambiguous weather of almost spring. We went for a walk; picked pussy-willows with dew-damp fuzz and rubbed them against our cheeks. Soft. Softer. The sky and the hills blended, things became smudged: now, tomorrow, what we hope for, whatever else we are beyond this day. Things became silhouettes of themselves: telephone poles, pigeons perched on wires, rooftops, the details blurred with moisture. The trees wore necklaces of water drops. Bean splashed in every puddle. I splashed in every puddle. Sprout wanted to get his hands in things: in the mud, in the wet grass, in the sky. He kept reaching up, clapping. The sky was white on white.
Down by the pond all four of us watched rocks break through the last thin slips of ice floating at the surface. Ice that looked like cellophane. It’s a favorite thing, always, for anyone near water: to throw rocks. To pick up a hunk of quartz and let it fly. Sprout squealed with delight. DH was reluctant to share his best rocks with Bean who teetered thisclose to the edge, among the stubble of last years cattails, his slender arms snaking out away from his body awkwardly with each triumphant toss.
So this was today: fog, and writing, and small boys under foot (an unusual Monday. Bean’s school was closed for in-service.) It was a day of corn tortillas with beans and melted cheese, and making paper tails (which we all gleefully wore) and fighting off a slew of tail attacking pirates with wooden swords and lots of shrieking. Miraculously, it was also a day of semi productivity. A few paragraphs written, edited, the boys occupied with large squares of newsprint and six dozen crayons (now strewn everywhere imaginable.)
So what if things are up in the air; in the end they always are, and this, this is my life. Boys. Writing. Sneaking kisses in the foyer while pulling on coats. Collecting blue and brown eggs from under the warm feathered bodies of hens. And taking a walk, all of us, to the pond and back, stopping a hundred times to look at the world. To be astounded by the water rushing everywhere, the puddles, the catkins, the mud.
It’s easy to forget today. It’s easy to think in terms of what didn’t get done (that list is always so long.)
What are five small things from your day?