thoughts on february

i.

february has always been low on my list of favorite months.  the holiday hype is over, but it is still winter, the long dreary part that just isn't fun anymore. we've tried to outsmart february a few times, planning big trips to warm places, but even those avoidance techniques all have the lingering taste of february in my memory (like the time we took off to belize only to have eric eat some bad seafood and spend most of the vacation sitting on the toilet. just an example.) that february is short is really its only saving grace.  well, that and valentine's day.  if you're into that sort of thing.

but this year february has broken itself up into nice little chunks for me: small, manageable bites of time I can savor and enjoy before getting overly saturated.  we had cora's recovery period after her tonsillectomy with just enough snow to keep her justified in laying low inside. then we had a big snow, almost a whole week of having rabbit and eric home for big pots of chili and lots of board games. now we are off to florida for the last bit, a trip just long enough to wrap february up and move us gracefully into march.  I don't want to jinx it, but we might have outsmarted you this year, february.

ii.

we live high on a mountain, about a thousand feet above our little town.  our gravel driveway snakes an extra half-mile back from the paved road that leads back down the mountain.  when we get snow (and I know new englanders are rolling their eyes at me here) we just stay put. it is a great excuse to "hunker," a skill I am working to master this year. I don't hunker well, but I am learning. last week we got almost ten inches of snow. we didn't go anywhere for five days. and no one else did either. we walked to each others' houses, dragging kids on sleds. I must have made a pot of popcorn every day to feed all the sledders on their breaks. (the best hill in the neighborhood ends in our front yard.) my kids aren't that great at snow play, maybe because they don't get much practice, but probably mostly because their mother is not very good at snow play because she does not like to be outside in the cold for more than about 17 minutes at a time. the exception to this rule is fox and geese, which we can play for almost an hour at a time with nary a complaint. for those who don't know, fox and geese is a tag game played on a track in the snow shaped like a giant wheel with spokes. you have to stay on the track to stay in the game, and the routes just get deeper and slicker the longer we play.

we also took long hikes, just the kids and I. jamin and I are reading through the "little house" series, an exploration into REAL winters, so our snow was aptly timed. he enjoyed thinking about laura ingalls while we walked, singing just like pa might have to make the time go faster. he asked cora and I questions to take our minds off the cold ("cora, name five things that live underground.") and squatted to look at tracks and trails. it was the best time I have had with him in a very long time.

iii.

cora is doing just fine. her energy is all the way back up to normal and her diet is back to the regular drill as well. the only residual symptom is her voice, still pinched and squeaky as if she's been sucking on helium balloons. she seems totally unaware of it, and when we giggle at her high-pitched exclamations she looks slightly bewildered, searching for an explanation of the joke. but she is breathing easier and sleeping more soundly and all is well in the kingdom.

except for the bears. shortly after her surgery, cora woke up convinced there was a bear trying to come into her window. I've assumed it was a dream, a vivid and scary one, because we haven't stopped talking about it since. throughout the day she'll go snag a stuffed turtle from her bed and snuggle it while holding onto my leg and telling me she feels just a little worried about those bears coming in the window. jamin has been amazingly kind about it all. we've rearranged their bedroom (twice) so that cora's bed is not adjacent to either window. jamin has set up elaborate playmobil "traps" so that if any bear were to even try to come to the window, he would wake up right away to scare it off. it has become part of our bedtime routine to make sure all the cowboys and pirates are lined up on the window sill, the canon precisely aimed and cocked ready. I remember my sister being terrified of wolves as a child, thanks to my out-loud readings of "little house on the prairie." I suppose the cycle marches on.

iv.

I just finished a writing class titled "fearless women writers". for six weeks straight I found a sitter for the kids and then sat in the living room of an absolutely lovely woman who offered me and my fellow adventurers writing prompts and chocolate. it was delightful. I don't know that my writing improved all that much or if I wrote anything particularly earth-shattering, but I set up a writing desk for myself (where I am typing happily right this second) and gave myself permission to make writing a priority. now I just have to figure out a way to make it stick. we had a family meeting to make it clear that mama's writing desk is only for her: no one should move anything off of it or put anything on it without permission. cora immediately asked if she could put a treasure on my table for me, and I said that would be fine, so this afternoon I sat down to find a ceramic turtle sitting cozy with the ceramic hippopotamus I had put there earlier. cora has played happily in my bedroom pretending she is on an airplane to hawaii to visit our friend liam while jamin listened to a magic treehouse book on cd about penguins. maybe they got the message after all.

v.

spring is eagerly anticipated here. eric seems intent on making up for the summer he missed while we were in new york last year. he is homesteading full-steam ahead, with rabbit happily urging him on. our kitchen table is a landing zone for seed catalogs and seed packets, bee-keeping magazines and shittake dowels, "the encyclopedia for country living" bookmarked to the section on raising baby chicks. eric insisted there was no use in starting seeds, even inside, before the middle of march, but there is an earthbox full of tiny tiny kale sprouts parked in the rectangle of sunlight our back door provides. our 25 baby chicks should arrive in the mail the week before cora's birthday. we've scheduled a coop raisin' for early march. eric is out right now, hiking through the woods in search of oak limbs he can cut down to inoculate full of mushrooms. (his dowels sat overnight in the mailbox because of the snowstorm, but he called the company and was assured everything should be just fine.) last night was the last night in his intro to bee keeping class. he and sue settled on the final spot for the hives just yesterday afternoon. we are doing it, the things people have done for hundreds of years, but all new adventures to us. it is hard not to plan too much, to overextend our springtime dreams. february does that to people.