I Want to Take You Higher

Listening to: Sly & the Family Stone, Greatest Hits

The sun threw a thin and threadbare blanket of warmth over our still-cold shoulders but it was a welcome reprieve. Spring demurely showed a little of herself today. No grand gesture, a timid start but a start nevertheless.

By this afternoon the wee ones were out front, playing in the sand, riding tricycles, drawing my eyes from the pages of the novel I was trying to read, oh, every two minutes or so when someone punched someone or ran over someone's foot or poured sand in someone's hair or put an ant in someone's ear.

Maybe because it's been gray and dreary for almost two weeks straight but the sky looked alien, not just blue and cloudless but tinted with the rarified light of almost summer. In that light and the warmth it promised, my children went into hyperdrive. Mere handcuffs and tasers would not have stopped them.

Late in the afternoon, we joined several families at Soda Springs Park (so named because the spring that bubbles up there tastes like soda water) for a celebration of civilized weather after weeks of relentless wretchedness. Marni and Zeke took to the swings, "higher daddy, higher," my hands pushing two little pendulums in perfect rhythm, sending them soaring to kiss the early May sky. Lilly socialized with the older kids, playing tag, chasing each other up and down the slides. The adults huddled together and talked about adult things while I pushed my two little ones at the swings. I have my priorities.

A cold walk home as dusk dropped over the neighborhood but no one was regretting staying outside past sundown.

All the kids needed was one nice day to set everything right. Soon after we stepped into the warmth of the house, they fell out as if they'd been hit with tranquilizer darts.

Tomorrow is supposed to be much warmer, Friday even better than that. I'm supposed to post my song list tomorrow but don't know how I'll get anything accomplished with a severe case of Spring Fever. Not that I'm complaining.