Today was the Sabbath of the winter of our sick week. Since Elspeth wailed every time I detached her from my hip, and since the sun filled our house like the smell of good cooking, I hatted and coated the girls and we went out.
We jolly well took our runny noses and went out!
In the sunlight the girls suddenly looked as pale as porcelain, and I realized how very housebound we have been of late. The sky was blue without cloud, the air was pristine as only springtime air can be, and the street was alive with the sounds of jackhammers. We paused long enough for Merry to study the gash in the road and the men in their fluorescent jackets.
Then we pushed through the snow-melt sogginess and continued on our way. As I walked, my insides, which have seemed like a small, comfortable, but dark hovel, started to expand. Each breath I took pushed at my shadowed corners, until soon the sun was warming a cathedral inside of me; light flooded through the windows and made colored patterns on the floor and walls of my spirit.
Ah, SPRING.
When we finally reached home, we found the world celebrating in small and jolly ways. A crocus, yellow as butter, opened her mouth in a long, relieved exhalation:
An earthworm basked in the young sunshine, a great long fleshy earthworm whom Merry threatened to pluck. I yelled jealously, "No, don't touch him!" (Every gardener guards her earthworms well).
Even Elspeth's spirits were improved, and she toddled contently around the sun room as I clicked holiday pictures. Maybe I should have been watching her more carefully, as
Elspeth further celebrated SPRING by sucking out much of the contents of Merry's paint container.
The label stipulated chokable parts but contained no information on the consequences of ingesting the paint itself, so I swiped her mouth and hoped for the best.
SPRING so imbibed me with good will and hunger that I actually cooked dinner instead of asking Martin for sustenance when he returned home. . .teriyaki chicken, rice, giddy stalks of bright green broccoli. Near the end of the extravaganza I near removed the tip of my finger on the edge of a tin can. As I wrapped my bloody finger in paper towels I questioned the virtue of cooking at all.
But dinner was delicious, my finger is wrapped safely, Elspeth is sleeping, Merry is receiving a lecture from her father, and SPRING has officially begun. All then is right with the world.
