questions requiring no answers

Why can’t you come with me?

Why do you need to go?

One Q is mine, the other is Ed’s. We’re really not asking, because we know the answers. We’re stating our position – that I wish he’d want to go, that he wishes I wouldn’t want to go.

Spring break is very late this year – it does not start until at the end of next week. I tell my students – it’s been so warm, it feels like we’re wrapping up the school year. Except that we’re not. Not yet. Even as in the last months of a teaching year, every bit of reading, of lecture writing, of class preparation takes longer. You don’t want to slow down, you don’t want to finish limply and so you do more, even as your brain neurons have a healthy dose of spring fever. Sort of like softball pitchers, effortlessly tossing balls into the air. Without focus.

Spring break is the time that Ed rarely wants to go anywhere with me. Too short a break. Besides, he likes the farmette in the earliest months of spring. His preference is to go away for long, but rarely. Mine is exactly the opposite.

So this year, I’ll go away alone. In my life, I’ve traveled alone more than I’ve traveled with someone and so I am quite used to it, even as I wish my occasional traveling companion would drop the “occasional” part. I know, I know. He’d like me to drop the “frequent” in his description of me. Meet Nina, the frequent traveler. "Occasional" would, for him, be much more satisfying.

We would not be who we are if we were what the other wanted.


In other news – well, in anticipation of leaving this Thursday, I have a load of work – both of the bookish kind and outdoor stuff as well. Spring has galloped ahead of me and now I’m left with raspberry canes to trim, lettuce seeds to sow, our tomatoes to transplant.











Oh, it's a green world out there! Ten days ago, there was not a sign of spring. I took a photo of the farmhouse. Bathed in brown. Today? Well now...





Good work. Happy work. The skies are gray, the temps have settled into the comfortable sixties. We’re indoors working, we’re outdoors working, back and forth, all day long, one task, another, and another, until the sun, if there was one to be seen, nears the setting time.











Yes, it’s a green world out there! I honor it by cooking asparagus spinach soup – winter spinach and spring asparagus. Perfect combination.

What if I give over my miles and you could travel free? I already paid for a room...

What if I took you out to dinner every night here? We could work outside, then finish with a dinner out...

I've always said -- Ed is Ed. But, too, as he so well knows, Nina is Nina.