I woke up early, the light frost from last night still clung, sparkling, to the trees and grasses. Taking the dogs out a little while later, I watched it evaporate into the air in misty curls and trails that, when the golden sun hit them, exploded into glitter, suspended above the branches and rocks.

Spring here feels a little like a secret double-life, a time you can stand on a dusty dirt road on the valley floor and bake in an intense and coppery sunshine, as you look up and watch the snow drift and blow off the peaks six and seven thousand feet over your head. Perfect for fires and blankets and kettle-cooked soup outside at night. And meteor showers. The only competition for attention being the hundreds of millions of other stars, twinkling in between.

What question is there.

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Sarah tells me the the weather
from her room with the lime green curtain
drawn to make lime green shadow on her walls,
where her tiny transistor radio crackles and breaks
and she sits on the messy floor,
seasoned reception master, making magic,
making sure she doesn’t miss anything
she ought to relay.

“Snow showers today!” she says,
running out excited, and then runs back in
and shuts the door.

I laugh, what else can you do?
It was almost 70 yesterday.

Shane has left for the office under
the first flakes, we have decided instead
to stay one more time to be sure.
I’d feel a little foreign lately, like a doting,
stay-at-home mom as much as I’ve been
working from here, were it not for this
seven-inch-thick folder piled full with
deadlines, to-dos and calls to return.

I’ve been looking for the artwork notes all morning.

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In the last three days, Sarah has completed 100-problem math worksheets with only one wrong answer, has been photographed as a model for the railroad brochure, has taken a horseback riding lesson, has signed up for golf lessons (and had her first lesson today), has had one of her twice a week tae-kwon-do classes, has gotten two new friend’s phone numbers, has done two masterful loads of laundry, has come to her own conclusion that soft music on at night might make for nice dreams, has been performing prolific web searches for animals and practiced some impressive reading skills on the pages she’s found, has browsed her Ranger Rick and Kids Discovery magazines and shared her favorite parts of it, asking a ton of questions in the process, has waved and said hello to countless kids she knows that she’s seen out and about in town, and tonight has asked for and then learned the appropriate form for endurance push-ups.

Oh the deprivation of a concrete classroom! Oh the slovenly, lonely lifestyle of a homeschooler.

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