reaching

This is the closest I'm going to get today (and for many more days to come) to spring. It's been cold and gray here and a few minutes ago it started snowing lightly. It may not add up to anything, but that's not the point is it? There are scratch marks on the walls and I feel like howling. Louder than the wind swirling around my house. This possibly life-saving cashmere from Jabberwocky Farms is named "Iris". I've always loved this color combo.
          When I was ten years old and my family moved into a new "country" house in the northeast Bronx, I convinced my father to paint my room these colors. I thought it was the height of girl-cool and I loved entering that room and closing the door upon the "outside" world. In that lavender and yellow room I read, listened to music, daydreamed, and started to write really dumb poems in a notebook with a red cover that I'd cut and sewn together myself. I never showed the poems or diary entries to anyone and when I discovered that my mother had found my hiding place in my very own room - and read what I'd written - I didn't keep a diary again while I lived in that house. In fact, I didn't take up what became "journaling" until I was long gone from that room and my childhood. Such is the power of mothers.
          So, instead of howling, I'm working on yarns that have a touch of spring color in them. It's better than brooding over what seems like a longer winter than usual (it isn't of course - it's always like this). I am craving yellow and waiting for the "dandelion" colored alpaca sock yarn to arrive. Meanwhile, dependable Opal from my sock yarn stash serves. No thinking, minimal planning (like what color to begin with). Just nice regular keep-me-interested knitting that easily allows for simultaneous movie-watching, book-listening or conversations.

So off I go now to the post office - in the flying snow - to check for a possible yarn delivery. I'll finish working at my desk when I return, after fixing a cup of hot Assam tea.


you inhale sharply
cold scent of new snow
spring daydream dashed