"Spring will never be fall," says Aidan

One day flowers were dropping
from the sky
Spring is here
Spring will never be
Fall

Fuzz

In a funk. Of sorts. The fuzzy-headed kind where coffee doesn't help, but maybe crack would.

I want to read the Jane Jacobs book, but I'm tired.
I want to take photos, but I'm tired.
I want to talk to people, but I'm tired.
I want to write about my conversation with Ernie, but I'm tired.

Instead I play romper room and make playdough and playdough snakes with eyes and mouths that eat entire cities, trash trucks and all. We roll the trucks through to make tracks. Tracks and tracks.

Instead I sit with my daughter and read. Listen to her form letters. Invent words that might be right. She reads a line, "During the war," from a book that she chose from the school library, adaptation of Sleep Hollow. Earlier she asked what "Sysco" spelled as we sat in George's eating, talking. Wondering how to explain conglomerate.

Tonight we have a date to read The Snow Queen from a book given me by my grandmother. This afternoon we have a conference, the parent teacher kind.

Children arrive. Then they go. Then they come again and leave trails of books upstairs so that I know who has been there. Goodnight Moon. And another copy of Goodnight Moon. Runaway Bunny. The Mitten. Snowy Day. And another copy of Snowy Day in organized fashion, on the blue rug. This makes me laugh and I leave the books there because I want to be reminded, reminded of the people I love and that young is not forever.

A lot can change in a year

For Laura

Rummaging through a drawer full of junk I found a hand-colored card made by Laura when the kids were in the three's class. Valentine's Day. Coming across it unexpectedly made me miss her in a way that I couldn't if I'd known her better. An incomplete miss, but a miss nonetheless. And exacerbated by a sighting of the ex, this morning, in front of Scroo Cooking. The boys at St. Mel's now, him driving and dropping, but hard to shake the memory of her pajama-wearing drops and pickups at preschool. Hard to shake the memory of her disgust with her ex.

Thinking about the day that I went to her house, the way she covered Lisa with a blanket, brought her a warm mug of tea. We talked about the coldness of the bathroom floor in the morning, an old house, insulation stuffed by her to improve a situation. I think about what I might have said or done if I'd known that she was dying. I hope nothing much differently because people need to be able to get out from under the weight of death, to feel that they can be, without being too much.

About a month after she died I drove by her house, a forlorn looking assortment of toys and stuff in front. I don't know what I thought I'd see. Kids playing. Friends stopping by. Laura.

The point is that I think about her, more than I think about a lot of people. I think about what's gone, and I think about what's still here. Her clothes, being photographed to sell on ebay. Her house, empty, but not entirely. Her boys. Her essence. It's her essence that interests me. The surreal way that a person stays in the world, even after they are gone. Why some people matter more than others. How to keep. And how to let go.

Riding

The past isn't supposed to matter too much. So I've been told and read.

Be present.

Mindless, I mean mindful.

Seems, though, that it hobo rides the rails. Past mingles with present mingles with future in cocktail-party fashion.

A face becomes more than a face. A joke, a cosmic dig.

I'm riding then spinning. Hurtling, then hurling. Fast forward memory.

Forward and for word.