Thursday

When I retired, I switched off my internal alarm clock: the need to be up before dawn, worrying about the day's classes disappeared. Heaven? Well, yes, but it is a heaven of a psychological kind. In reality, I wake up early, now as before. Decades of morning work anxiety aren't erased with the simple signing of a resignation letter. Still, these days, I luxuriate in a wakeful but dozy morning in bed. I'm rarely up before 7:30 and our breakfast most often is at 9 or even later.

But not today.

Ed has a machining trip planned for the day and he tells me in the predawn hours that he must be out within the hour. Our breakfast, therefore, is very very early.






I mention this because after, I find myself unexpectedly with a long and free morning. This seems rather incredible. Sure, I could plunge into the usual weeding, cleaning, cooking, accounting, washing, trimming etc., but I hesitate. What would it be like if I took my book out  -- the one I usually read just before switching off the light -- and read now? Or if I spent idle moments gazing at the garden, with those love struck eyes I have every time I look out at the thriving perennial fields?

It's too cold to sit outside and so I putz around a little, listening to music. I feel the pull of duty: I clean the chicken coop and do a load of laundry. I pluck weeds around this come-back kid, a striped blue violet:





And then I take my Kindle out, read through to the end of one book and into a new one.


And it strikes me that I should, at least once a week give myself the gift of a morning without chores or obligations. Without emails, without the clutter that tends to fill the small spaces of time most of us have every now and then. Yes, come warmer weather, I should give myself a porch morning with nothing but a pad for note taking (because what if an idea starts to form?) and my Kindle for reading, in the company of birdsong and the occasional cluck of one of the hens, who are never too far away...






In the afternoon, I am with Snowdrop.

The girl is blazing ahead toward greater independence. Ah, but to sit! To finally fit something, perfectly aligned, into a desired space (the mouth comes to mind)! To move! To explain to grandma what need drives a cry!

But things cannot be rushed and so we practice all that is feasible right now -- the sit, the flip, the stuffing of a few fingers into the mouth. Well, actually everything Snowdrop does today seems to end with a few fingers in the mouth.
















But this should not distract us from the obvious truth: she is, as always, an energetic, driven, happy child!











In the evening, Ed and I go to our local farmers market. It's nearly closing time, but there is still a lot of asparagus on vendors' tables. We buy bunches and bunches of it. I'm still not quite ready to believe that the growing season is fully upon us. A month ago, nothing poked through the ground and today, we have a million spears of asparagus. Amazing.