A break in routine

The wind chimes on the neighbor's porch across the street sing a high pitched melody.  It's a repetitive  nursery rhyme, as if it's being sung by a woman in her garden absent-mindedly, the memory of childhood long past.

On my porch the tin cans clank together, my son's homemade wind chime from two years ago, in a lower baritone cadence.

The sun is reluctant to go down in late February, as if it's arguing with the night that it is nearly Spring and that the glow of it's fading light is more romantic for being in a time between seasons.  The hedges catch its glow and bounce it back, and in between the sky and the earth the glare catches in my eyes.  I squint inside my sunglasses and feel the tightness in my forehead creases: evidence of the faintest bit of sun kissed skin.

It is a kind of magic when a season arrives before it is due.  We are supposed to get wintry weather later this week, but for now we sit on the porch and run in the grass in tee shirts and tank tops, easing sweaty socks off our feet to stretch out our winter-hidden toes.

The boys are making criss cross marks in the yard with their bikes and scooters.  Eager to steal speed from the sunshine, they zip around like dragonflies, trading out toys as if their day depends on how many vehicles can be released from the garage.

Birds mimic their movements, flying and diving in the sky, singing along with the wind chimes, and bounding from tree to tree as if sharing their song will ignite the buds within.

Today has been a sick day, there have been antibiotics and tissues and the nebulizer even had to make an appearance, but sitting here with dirt on my knees from weeding, a tall ice water by my side that doesn't make my guts go numb with the drinking, this is alright.

Earlier today the dog got at the neighbor's chicken.  There are still feathers floating in corners of my house where they landed off her fur as I chased her to her crate in frustration and sadness, and horror that I would have to tell my neighbor of the death in my yard.  Men came to put new windows on our house and asked me, gently, if I was aware I lost a chicken.  I sadly explained the chicken was not mine.

All through the day I have been guiltlessly putting off folding the laundry, emptying load after load out of the dryer and into the bin by the washing machine, letting it become a mountain of cascading shirts, socks, and pants that seems to laugh at me as I pick a fallen sock from the floor and place it back at the top of the mountain, which is now so steep that it pitches to a point against the wall.

I think this is why I love it when Spring says hello in late February.  There's something decidedly rebellious about it, as if God himself is saying "leave the laundry!"  I don't know, this may be over-spiritualizing things, or looking for excuses where none are needed.  Nonetheless, I am finding the song of the wind chimes, the frenetic play of the children, and the deliciously warm sunlight studded by a crisp winter breeze to be scrumptiously off beat.

It's almost enough to take my mind off the poor neighbor children's lost feathered friend.  It is at the very least enough to keep my head clear enough that I have decided I will take them cookies and flowers and leave it at that.

I suppose the chicken just couldn't resist the temptation to play outside the pen in the early Spring weather.

Neither could my dog.