[continued from previous entry]
The trouble with taking FOREVER to relate a happening -- like I've been doing here these last few weeks -- is that big honking piles of other stuff happens as the days square-dance by and some of it never gets chronicled. I realize that in this case the lack of chronicling likely will not have anyone in their right mind shedding bitter tears. But still. Let me have my delusions of importance.
From the last three weeks:
-- Sitting on the back stoop during afternoons of radiant sunshine and temperatures mild enough to allow lounging outside without picking up frostbite. One afternoon, almost two weeks ago now, the day grew so astonishingly mild that I needed no down vest, no coat or jacket. (Thermal underwear, yes. I'm not completely whacked out.) There have been a handful of other days since then beautiful enough to get me sitting outside, but none that mild.
Soaking up sunshine, the world around so quiet. The only sounds: birds at the feeder, the occasional sound of vehicles passing on the two-lane down in the valley, the noise drifting up with the breeze. The narrow, curving path I'd kept shoveled between stoop and driveway grew slowly wider as snow cover began giving way before sunlight. Within the last few days, the snow has thinned enough that some of the big lynx pawprints that parallel the house have melted down enough to expose dormant grass -- the first patches of faded green visible in the yard.
-- Pulling back in on days when cold weather reasserted, especially the ones that came paired with nights of arctic conditions. Feeling my focus narrow down, my overriding concern getting through it until more moderate days brought relief.
-- Dragging a lawn chair out on that first amazingly mild afternoon -- relaxing, reading, my near fishbelly-white skin picking up the teeniest bit of color. All that with eight or ten inches of snow close by. When the sun began dropping behind the trees and a cool breeze started up, I retreated inside and found that among the insects that had come to life during those hours of near springtime temperatures, a green lacewing had found its way into the house -- big and delicate looking, poised on the glass of the kitchen door window, the last rays of sunlight making its wings shine.
-- Waking up in the wee hours on two or three occasions, once hearing the sound of a door closing off in another part of the house, once or twice hearing footsteps. The household ghost (you heard me) reminding me it was still hanging around.
That makes two of us then. (Hanging around, I mean.) For now.
España, te echo de menos
rws 5:48 PM [+]
