Last night the wind was ferocious. I went to bed early to read, but the sound of the wind grabbed my attention so many times I stopped to listen. It was easy to imagine myself in a house on a cliff overlooking the ocean while the wind whistled and howled around me. The house would be a huge old Victorian filled with dusty rooms and mystery. The French doors in my bedroom, with the prerequisite long white, billowing curtains, would face the ocean. When the doors blew open, as they usually do in mysterious houses, I’d stand on the small balcony looking out at the water while the curtains blew around me. I’d see the huge white caps pummeling the rocky shore. That was about as far as my imagination took me before I turned off the light and went to sleep. Later I was awakened by the sound of the rain.
The day is a dismal one, cloudy and damp, but it is warm, in the mid 40’s. Much of the snow disappeared with the rain except in my neighbor’s front yard. Underneath their trees a tract of snow remains. The huge plowed piles on the corner are just about gone, but my neighbor’s snow, still white, resists the warmth and the rain. I guess it is winter’s last gasp.
The morning birds are the first sounds of spring. The leaf blowers are the second. My neighbor’s deck is now being cleared of winter debris. It won’t take long. My deck, on the other hand, has leaves and branches fallen and blown from the pine trees which overhang it. Cleaning all that debris will take much longer. My backyard has some huge branches which broke off during the winter. In the no man’s land between my house and the next, a pine tree trunk has split in half. One half, leaning on the branches of other trees, will be sawed into pieces and hauled away. The other half will be left in the ground.
Good Friday has always been a no school day, but starting around the sixth grade, I had to sign up for an hour vigil at the church. I used to sneak in a book and would read the hour away. It always went fast.
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