Today was a truly warm spring day. The kind where you start off tentatively wearing a sweatshirt, sure that as soon as a cloud appears and covers the sun, you'll be shivering, but then evolves into just a tee-shirt, sunning yourself in the backyard kind of day. The sky was a bright blue, the kind little kids paint in nursery school classes, but hardly ever shows up in reality (or is it that we so rarely take the time to look up and notice?). With so little else going on in my day, something I say a prayer of thanks for, I was able to soak it in. We're on "spring break" here, which basically means my children and I get a break from working our computers all day.
I did have to go through about an hour of hold time on my phone to defer our car loan payments (new laws make it so that loan can be pushed back two months, and paid at the end of the loan). The people I spoke to were helpful, and I'm relieved it's one less thing to worry about while we navigate being a one-income family. And I didn't waste the hour- I'd go stir crazy if I had to just sit still, so I listened to the on-hold elevator music while hanging up white Christmas Lights around our screened-in back porch. I also swept it out, and cleared out the junk, as it had become something of a "catch all" place between the driveway and kitchen. We had been planning to install tiles bought last fall for a while now, but we need it to be a little warmer before we can start. In the mean time, sweeping and putting up white twinkle lights are my way of making it more of a sanctuary at dusk and in the evenings. I want to use it as my Mommy-cave once it's finished. Girls' Night In has been a staple in my life since I was living in California, and I can't wait to host evenings out there with my friends, playing Cards Against Humanity, serving wine and cheese, and laughing while our kids run around the yard.
While I took care of the porch, the girls ran around outside with their camera, making home videos about E. and her "twin sister Bella" (E. with a different pair of sneakers on), and their dolls. R. manned the camera, and I periodically was drawn in to wave, but post-phone call, mostly got to enjoy reading my A Legend In The Making book. History has always fascinated me, and I love reading about baseball players, their personalities, and this game that I love so much (and miss).In the evening, painted a radiator cover that had come with our house- the people who lived here previously had put in a cover that looked like a fireplace mantle, and a front piece that was painted with a bowl of flowers. It was lovely, but I had thought about changing it to a roaring fire for years now, and it seemed like the right time to pull out my acrylics and do a makeover. While Jeff worked on seeding plants, I impersonated an impressionist, mixing vibrant reds with bright yellows and oranges. The painting reminds me of the illustrations in the children's version of Götterdämmerung
that sits on my bookshelf and belonged to my dad (he used to read them to us as children- some kids got the Poky Little Puppy, we got Wagner). The end result was exactly what I was going for, and adds a pop of warmth to our bedroom.
I threw together a dinner using the last of the fresh spinach, sauteeing it with onions
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| Solar lights in the Tulip Tree at my mom's |
My mom lives on two acres of property, and we chatted with her and Bryan (Popum) about the flowers blooming all over the property. They have one tulip tree that looked particularly gorgeous, with solar light mason jars that were just starting to illuminate as the sun set. While we talked, the girls ran over to a small fishpond to visit E.'s frogs. When I was about 13, my sister Nicole had spinal fusion surgery. While she was recovering, our Mom and Dad were putting in a garden, and Nic asked if we could have a fishpond. Well, it turned out the house across the street was putting in a pool, so my dad ran over and offered the guy working the excavator $50 if he would come to the edge of our driveway, and just dig out a few big scoops of dirt. He obliged, and after lining that hole with carpet padding and a black plastic tarp, molding the mound into another small pool above the big hole so we could have a waterfall, and filling everything with water, we had a pond.
Close to three decades later, E. and R. decided to give their Popum tadpoles for Father's Day. Those tadpoles have since grown into frogs who are virtually indistinguishable, except to E., who has named "the one with the really big head" Biggie. She has a photo she took of Biggie framed in her room, and was very excited today to see that he was sitting on a rock, as was a friend of his.
After, we drove over to my mom-in-law's house, where we chatted with her and and my dad-in-law (them in their driveway, use next to our car across the street). We ran over and put down my mother-in-law's present on the lawn, and she retrieved it after we were a safe distance away. It's not the ideal gift-giving scenerio, but it has to do for now, and I'm just happy we got to see all the girls' grandparents in one day.
As we were getting ready to leave, the girls pointed out how bright the full moon was, and how clear the sky. We took a few minutes to admire the stars, and remark on how clear the nights are, especially with the pollution levels going down as people are staying home. This led to a discussion of a comet that may be visible over the next few nights, and I remembered back to my childhood, when my dad took me to the top of a local mountain to see Halley's Comet. I was six or seven (I don't remember what month it was), and what I remember about that night was the grown ups joking about how the next time it came around, they likely wouldn't be alive to see it.
I didn't quite understand that at the time, but I could tell my dad was trying to show me something special, and there was an almost spiritual sense of connectedness with the universe that night. Realizing the universe is bigger than just us, or our planet, was something of a mindtrip. My dad spent a lot of time when I was younger teaching my sister and I "lessons" before bed. These could be on topics related to space, or dinosaurs, or playing poker (I schooled some guys in college when I was a Freshman thanks to those tutorials), but the space ones were always the most interesting to me. That night, a nice man who was also there with his daughter offered to let me look through his telescope, and while I could see the white blur moving across the sky, I didn't quite understand the magnitude of the moment until much later. Halley's was a once-in-a-lifetime for most- if you were over 25 when you saw her, chances are, that would be the only time. It was a moment of reverence, and a moment of reflection.
I feel like to a degree, that is what this entire isolation has been like, and continues to be like. It's a brief moment in history, but one that will be forever emblazened on the minds of those who lived through it, and recorded in books as a time that changed our society. I'm just hoping it's for the better.
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