words for the season

An excerpt from "Mass for the Day of St. Thomas Didymus"
by Denise Levertov

ii. Gloria
Praise the wet snow
falling early.
Praise the shadow
my neighor's chimney casts on the tile roof
even this gray October day that should, they say,
have been golden.
Praise
the invisible sun burning beyond
the white cold sky, giving us
light and the chimney's shadow.
Praise
god or the gods, the unknown,
that which imagined us, which stays
our hand,
our murderous hand,
and gives us
still,
in the shadow of death,
our daily life,
and the dream still
of goodwill, of peace on earth.
Praise
flow and change, night and
the pulse of day.

traveling II.

arrived to missoula just before the first snowfall of the season...

many hikes in the snow with family and friends (yes, i think i am about to get hit with a snowball here)...


some of the beauty of montana: while i was in missoula, i thought often, "why would i ever leave?"

stunning moments caught on film...

traveling in style (amtrak) with my friend katie ...

visiting lovely relatives in vancouver...

dinner with aunt and uncles aboard uncle johnny's, aka., "scuppers" (for explanation, see below) boat-home.

a reading of family favorite Margaret Wise Brown's "Scuppers the Sailor Dog."

a little blurry, but a beautiful sunset from the train (western north dakota i think) on my way back to the midwest...

traveling.

i am on the road. Just 2 weeks ago, I loaded my car with my clothing and important papers.

Oh, and a beautiful and very large hoya occupied the back seat of my little corolla. this hoya lived at my aunt and uncle's house in a DC suburb for some 10 years until they moved out of the country. It passed into my care 2 years ago, where it promptly found itself attacked by fat, yellow aphids, against whom i have been waging war ever since. this summer, we made some headway when i relocated it to the fresh air of our postage-stamp backyard --- the aphids disappeared for several months, and the downtrodden plant managed one lovely bloom. yet, in recent weeks, i found some of the pretty new shoots covered with the little buggers once again. when i decided to move from baltimore, my sister announced she did not want the responsibility of caring for this problematic plant and decreed that it must be taken to our mother for safekeeping and eventually back to our aunt, its original owner, who now resides in kansas. anyway, i was glad for the green company throughout my drive

so, i drove west, leaving baltimore in the rain, feeling a certain disbelief that surrounds those moments when we actively do something we've long thought of or spoken of. i wondered what the devil i was doing. taking some time off sounded good and appropriate after these 3 stressful years, yet student loans loom a little too close and large for comfort, and i think that at almost 30 i am entering yet another time of transition (shouldn't i be settling a little / buying a house?). coworkers asked me why i was leaving. my answer: "its time." coworkers asked me if i had secured another job. my answer: "no." coworkers asked me where i would be living. my answer: "i have no idea." i do not know if they thought me a) crazy, b) irresponsible, c) evasive, or d) possessing some strange sense of adventure.

the autumn colours looked extra bright, i thought, in the october rain. thank goodness for their colour, or the day might have seemed all together too dreary-melancholy. despite a readiness to move on, i left many good and loved things in baltimore.

i stopped in for tea at wazoo. lovely. too short.

spent the night with friends in ohio, after driving into a beautiful sunset that brought tears to my eyes.

listened to barbara kingsolver's "animal, vegetable, miracle" on tape for most of the drive, a charming and full-of-often-idiosyncratic-good-sense book. she writes about her family's farm in appalachia, about the vegetables they grow there, about the goodness of living off what they themselves grow. she describes the goodness of eating locally, of enjoying each vegetable at the exact time when it ripens and is plucked from the plant or pulled from the earth, and the sometimes peculiar processes of growing, tending, and eating these home-grown vegetables (and poultry). asparagus, zucchini, and pumpkins came alive as some of the main characters. i imagined a lovely and productive garden all my own in whatever place life might take me next.

spent the weekend with parents and grandparents. made them pumpkin soup in its own shell (from a pumpkin i picked just for this occasion at a lovely family farm in montgomery county, maryland) until the bottom of the shell gave out and i blended it all and put it in a soup pot. delicious.




i visited an old and dear friend in colorado. we spent long hours catching up on 4 years of life, i held her sweet five month old son, played a good game of rook with her and her husband, and drank coffee with the front range of the rockies in my sight out of their dining room windows.



i met up with another friend in san francisco and we explored the colorful city, enjoyed the idyllic weather, climbed the city's steep streets, bicylcled across the golden gate bridge, and drove out to wine country, toured a winery and tasted some wine.





now i am up late in orlando, florida, alone in my grandmother's house. she sleeps tonight in a nearby hospital, having just undergone a minor surgery. i find little to recommend orlando - endless strip malls, suburban look-alike subdivision after suburban look-alike subdivision - i do not find it a choice destination to visit --- but i am needed here for this week. i drive my grandmother's car to her hospital every morning, take her a thermos of good coffee, encourage her to eat, rub good lotion into her dry skin, sit with her, knit with her. sometimes i think i would rather be somewhere else. yet, i try to sit with this time patiently and fully, knowing that time with my quirky, stubborn grandmother will not last forever. i surmise that this is the way it should be - generations together, the young caring for the old in startlingly similar ways as these same old once cared for these same young. this grandmother bought me my first knitting needles and yarn and taught me to knit, a hobby i love. two days ago, i bought her some knitting needles and yarn, printed out a pattern and put them into her hands. if i remember correctly, the yarn in both cases was almost the same color.

canvas, firelight, friends.

i spent this past warm october weekend with dear friends in the mountains in west virginia. for me, sleeping under canvas, and chatting and laughing around campfire are things inextricably and long-linked to contentment.

the autumn colors were bright and lovely...


the campfire-tending lasted from dawn until late into the night...



the friends are good good souls...






and the bluegrass and beer were hearty.



more days of work lie ahead. but just now, a blustery rainstorm blew into the city, blessing this quiet evening.

rooted?

during the past week, we enjoyed several golden, peaceful late-september days when a chill lightens the air hinting at a new season. as i have become acquainted with the four seasons during the past 10 years, the first chill of autumn, although accompanied by these types of almost-perfect days, also unsettlingly reminds me that winter lies ahead, a season with which i am not friendly.

last sunday, the crisp, sunny air announced the change and transition that seem to be enveloping me once again. change is the strong wind that i cannot seem to resist every several years. and change is indeed some sort of wild thing - not something i seek - but something that blows in as a rainstorm, a clap of thunder, or a cold and silent snowfall.

i just gave notice that i will leave my job in about one month; i am leaving baltimore for some yet-undetermined place.

i have accomplished much in these last 3 years - all, really, that i came here to baltimore to accomplish - but this time has also been difficult. i have not felt my roots deepen in this place, i do not yearn to stay. i feel that my path lies somewhere out ahead.

but now that yet another leaving lies just around the corner, now that plane tickets have been purchased, now that my last day of work is just 8 day shifts and 3 night shifts away, i do feel the tug of even shallow roots that might have grown down into the alleys behind the rowhomes where i have lived, into the garden i tended this summer, into a workplace where i felt a part of a meaningful legacy of care for people living with HIV/AIDS. i also feel the tug of deeper roots touching people i love. i sit here on the porch of this cheerful second floor apartment i shared with my closest friend and sister this year, i live a short hour from steadfast college friends, just a four hour drive from a farm called wazoo. these are all people i would like to see often, people with whom i'd like to share daily mugs of tea and coffee with, people whose children i want to see grow and change and recognize me easily.

i have a friend who tried to live away from a place where she was deeply rooted. after college, she traded the kansas plains for the chicago lakeshore, gridded farm roads for rides on city buses and the el. unsettled, she soon moved back to the place of her childhood and once again lives solidly rooted to her mennonite community, her family, and her farmer-husband.

i do not have such a place or such a coherent community to return to. growing up, i knew no other home than nairobi. but all that that home meant to me is now scattered. east africa does indeed beckon me back. some of my roots will never be pulled from that place, but i am compelled in many directions... a bit of a tumbleweed i guess.

what is next?

a journey to see friends and family:
chicago---san francisco---vancouver---missoula---lawrence & newton kansas---san diego...

soul-searching---job-searching.

i'm not sure where this wind will take me. i feel excitement as it picks up, and a bit of a fright not knowing where i will land. i think, though, that the movement feels right.

on nursing and why it is good for me

i admit i have a complex - a fear about being unhelpful, lazy, or "useless" in life. rather, i want to be legitimately helpful, productive and useful - and somehow this is part of why i became a nurse. i think i wanted to feel needed, and to have a marketable skill, in my post post-liberal arts, what-do-i-do-with-an-undergraduate-anthropology-degree funk of feeling useless (please don't get me wrong, i have nothing but high regard for anthropology). yet, nursing as part of my unfolding notions of vocation and even "calling" (although i hesitate to use this word, i do believe in it at some level), has taught and shaped me in ways i could not have foreseen three years ago.

as a nurse, i encounter people in very visceral ways during their strongest and most courageous moments, but also when they feel deeply vulnerable and fearful; people who appreciate every small thing you do for them, but also people who (often not so pleasantly) refuse care and treatment for many complicated reasons; people who will heal and people who will not.

yes, i have been called a dumb-ass (for no apparent reason) by a patient after dealing with his copious (and need i even say unbelievably unpleasant) diarrhea all night. one patient, after being told a certain diagnostic test would be postponed, left AMA (against medical advice), and threatened (in my face of course) to blow the hospital and its staff away sometime in the near future.

yet, more often, i have experiences that touch me and teach me such as the following: a while ago, i cared for a 37 year old woman, dying from a degenerative neurological disease that does not affect her mind, but affects her physical functioning: from everything from walking to speech and swallowing. she was admitted late at night, without family members, was very anxious, and began coughing uncontrollably. although i am sure there were physiologic reasons for this episode, it was made all the worse by her anxiety. because of how her speech was affected, she was not able to communicate easily to me about how she was feeling. i was unsure if she was ok, and felt myself getting worked up over her condition, so i snapped into action, checking her vital signs and paging the on-call physician.

and suddenly, after being so entirely focused on numerical results and concrete tasks - 98% oxygen saturation, 130/74 blood pressure, 37.3 temperature, 24 respirations per minute (all normal) - as the patient continued her distressed, shrieking cough, i took her hand, made eye contact, and asked what she needed. she replied by making two simple requests that i was able to understand despite her distress and uncelar speech: (1) a damp washcloth for her forehead and (2)"can you rub my back?" i placed the cool washcloth on her forehead and pulled a chair up to the side of her bed and rubbed her back. almost immediately, she stopped coughing, her breathing became slower, she closed her eyes, and i felt her body relax. i stayed with her, rubbing her back, for maybe 10 or 15 minutes until it seemed she had slipped into sleep. i quietly stood up to leave the room, relieved, and as i turned, she (almost inaudibly, but unmistakably) said "thank you. don't forget about me now." she slept the rest of the night.

nursing grounds me, as a person for whom it is so easy to get caught up in internal, sometimes endless thoughts and life-analysis. for one night a week, i am forced to "listen" to the immediate physical needs of sick individuals, to watch for subtle changes in the workings of their bodies. i've learned to ask patients in a matter-of-fact manner about such life details as their last BM, the last time they had sex and whether they used a condom, and if they inject or snort heroin.

so, when i go to work (often dreading the long night ahead and the struggle to stay awake), i find myself compelled to try to imagine life perspectives and experiences fully foreign to my own. what is it like to be hopelessly addicted to injected heroin? what is it like to live with HIV and/or AIDS? what is it like to be homeless? what is it like to be a dialysis patient? what is it like to have had one's children taken away and placed into foster care? what is it like to have been incarcerated multiple times? what is it like to be bipolar? what is it like when these things define one's reality?

for one night a week, i cannot live inside my own head, and this is good for me.

small planes, remote spots

it has been a long time since i flew in a small airplane, although growing up in kenya, i used to do it rather frequently. small planes took us to spectacular and remote spots i feel privileged to have visited.

at least once a year, my family and i would fly from nairobi to a town called bunia, in eastern then-zaire, and on to where my grandparents lived in the middle of the ituri rainforest, to a village called itendei. we flew on small mission planes, that often seated just six passengers. at itendei, we landed on an airstrip that was neatly carved out of the thick forest, and covered with rich, green grass. if i close my eyes, i can remember the smells and sounds of an arrival to that airstrip - the sharp, fresh smell of mowed grass, the just-rained-on-damp-earth smell that never faded in that place, the popping sound of the plane's propeller starting up again after we had unloaded, the swahili and french greetings of all the children that came each time to observe the landing and taking off of the plane. I can see the way the grass flattened as the plane accelerated back down the airstrip for take-off. i can feel the cool, humid forest air on my face as i sat in the back of my grandparents' old ford truck as it jolted down the muddy track that led to to their house, and smell the wood smoke that hovered about the homes by the side of the road.

we also took small planes to northern kenya, the site of my father's dissertation research among the gabbra people, a nomadic pastoralist group. the setting is far different than that of my grandparents' home. flying north from nairobi, by mt. kenya, the north side of the mountain gives way to an ever-more arid landscape: first, miles and miles filled with low, scrubby, acacia trees and almost-always dry riverbeds, then to the chalbi desert, an old lake bed covered with crusty, white, alkaline deposits, and the rocky, lava-fields surrounding it and continuing north. just south of the ethiopian border, sits a serene cluster of old volcanic cores responsible for the lava fields around them - the hurri hills. in contrast to the surrounding desert, they are soft and green, and the air there is chilly; thick mist covers them each morning. on the hurri hills, i always imagined i was on some sort of tolkien-esque journey.

last wednesday, i flew to visit my brother in the northwoods of wisconsin. i flew to milwaukee and then boarded a beech 1900 airplane (a 20 passenger plane) to a small county airport in rhinelander, wisconsin. the plane lurched and swayed and we made two failed attempts to land in fog, before being turned back to milwaukee, sadly.

i finally did land in rhinelander at the same time the next day, which turned out to be crystal clear after the fog of the day before, and i spent one day, instead of my hoped-for two in the beautiful northwoods of wisconsin. the transition from winter to spring is much more dramatic there. the lakes, although showing signs of melting, were still frozen, and the ground was saturated with the snowmelt from several feet of snow, but it was lovely. the different varieties of pine and spruce, deep green on the sunny day, contrasted with the brightness of the snow and ice that still lay over their roots. the air was fresh and crisp, i went for a run on a deserted road in the afternoon, scared up a few deer, and we paddled in a canoe on an unfrozen channel in the quiet of the late afternoon.

my brother always ends up living in stunning places. just take a look at the pictures on his blog, if you get a chance. his next move, i might add, is to missoula, montana. on the other hand, i have ended up living in cities. i do love urban life - i enjoy the true variety of interesting and quirky people, i like the good radio stations, i like ethnic restaurants, i like feeling surrounded by others, yet anonymous at the same time, i think the urban landscape is fascinating...

but, when small planes have taken me to lovely, remote spots, i discover a longing in myself to live closer to the beautiful earth, further away from the built environment, to live with more quietness, and fresher air.

In defiance of winters last hurrah!

my sister (rlr) and i went on a lovely outing to harpers ferry today for a hike on the maryland heights trail. she is feeling inspired to tell about our day, so here she is:

rlr

So Harpers Ferry seems to be where we end up when we need a quick getaway from Baltimore... it has all the necessary components of 'a quick getaway'--a cute town with fun shops and good food, trails for hiking and biking and rivers for tube-ing down... This morning, confident that spring was here depsite the nor-easter that blew through this part of the world Thursday/Friday... we hit the road. Its a two hours-ish drive to Harpers Ferry...

Neither of us were fully prepared for the cold... we wore only minimal layers, breathable running shoes and left our winter coats safely back in Baltimore-- determined that spring ought to be here. Winter dosn't pay us any mind...

The wind was cold. BITINGLY COLD.



We came across these pour little souls that seemed to have gotten all hung up in branches, the last little ghosts of winter melting slowly away:



It was glorious to hike upwards, to get out of the wind, on the backside of the mountain (hill..?) and feel the sunshines' warmth...


... and find beauty in the blowing snow and sparkling ice...



The view, well the wind really, from the look out took your breath away.



We snaped a photo together-- before my shutter froze in the wind...

ONE of us was brave enough to make a lovely snow angel...



I can't think of a better end to a better day... but I'm ready for SPRING and bare feet and brown skin.

shake YOUR booty

i was recounting the humourous events of my night at work to my sister. she said it was worthy of a blog posting.
*********************************************************
last night, i took care of a ms. X. she is a lanky, fifty-year-old woman who looks like she is seventy. her sparse, greying hair has been expertly arranged by the nursing staff into a spiky bun on the top of her head and she is quick to provide a friendly, almost-toothless, very underbitten grin to all those who enter her room. ms. X has been hospitalized for over two months, and has been extremely sick, back and forth between our unit and the medical intensive care unit. her course has included hypotension, serious pneumonias, tonic-clonic seizures, and multisystem organ failure. to be honest, i'm surprised she is still alive - and her condition continues to improve slowly, yet noticeably, from day to day. with her progress towards recovery, her(?) personality has also emerged. ms. X is, lets say, pleasantly confused.

last weekend, soon after one of her transfers back to us from the intensive care unit, we found her squirming strangely in bed. when we asked her if something was wrong, she brightly sang,

"NO, I'M SHA-A-A-A-A-KIN'... MY... BOO-OO-OO-TY..."

she was, indeed, "shakin" her "booty," although at that point, she could barely lift her arm when i took her blood pressure.

the day before yesterday, when the medical team was rounding, she authoritatively reprimanded the wise and gentle attending physician...

"YOU KNOW, YOU'VE GOT TO STOP GETTING ALL THOSE GIRLS PREGNANT!"

last night i walked in and asked her how she was. she responded in a rather triumphant and cheerful manner,

"OH... WELL... I GOT HIT HEAD ON BY A TRUCK THREE DAYS AGO. WHATTYA THINK OF THAT?"

i nodded therapeutically, stating something to the effect of, "yes, it probably does feel like you recently got hit by a truck."

'YUP!"

i moved on. " are you having any pain?"

"NO... BUT MY LEG IS BROKEN TERRIBLE..."

and she promptly thrust her arm into my face, smiling widely.

"SEE? ITS TOTALLY BROKEN!"

my response (choosing to ignore, among other incongruencies, her obvious confusion of body parts): "oh, ms. X, you surely have been sick but you are doing so much better now! you are truly tough, ms, X!" she sheepishly - yet confidently - accepted my compliment.

"I KNOW... THANK YOU!"

this morning, at 5am, she stated that she was...

"VERY HUNGRY. CAN I JUST HAVE SOMETHING TO EAT?"

she is currently ordered to only receive pureed food, so i could not give her the usual snack offerings of graham crackers, lorna doones, or saltines. i tell her that i will see if we have some pudding or applesauce - which, of course, on sunday morning at 5am, we do not have. i did find a bowl of fruit cocktail, and mushed some up with a fork and offered her a spoonful. she put up a hand emphatically,

"WAIT!"

she went on, shutting her eyes tightly and clasping her hands in front of her,

"DEAR LORD, I THANK YOU FOR THIS FOOD THAT YOU HAVE PROVIDED. MAKE ME TRULY GRATEFUL. AMEN"

then she motioned to me to feed her the several spoonfuls of mashed peaches.

"MMM... GOOD... THANK YOU!"
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i chuckled often last night, as i struggled to stay alert throughout my seemingly endless 12 hour shift. i don't know if it is truly appropriate to chuckle at the peculiar behavior of someone who may be delerius, or possibly just wacky at baseline, but somewhere in all of the nonsense, her good humour was so clear and was such quirky evidence of her miraculously improving state.

mandalas

mandala is a sanskrit word meaning "circle" or "completion." during a visit from one of my aunts this weekend, we (myself, my sister, my aunt) spent an hour drawing our own "mandalas" together.

my sister spent extensive time creating mandalas last year during her community arts graduate program. this exercise was presented to her as a way to center and focus herself as she thought through her developing ideas about community arts, as she focused her interests, and interacted with others in the process of creating art. she drew some of her mandalas in pencil, sometimes she used oil pastels, and several times she made them out of clay. my aunt has been drawing mandalas as part of therapy, during a particularly difficult time in her life. i had never created a mandala before.

on sunday afternoon, as beautiful, sticky snow fell outside, we lit candles, played some gentle music, were silent together, and drew the following mandalas. the process centered and calmed me. the products are interesting, as you can see below - but the imagining and drawing process was far more important. i recommend creating a mandala when you have some free moments. work in any medium, use some type of circular guide, but do not be bound by it. i have read that this process can be used for stress reduction and relaxation, and can lower heart rate and slow breathing. i absolutely believe it. try it. i would love to hear how it goes.

my mandala

my sister's mandala

my aunt's mandala

sludge for ash wednesday

one of my best loved folk artists, dar williams, sings a rather melodramatic song about february, aptly titled "february." here are the lyrics (long, but fun to read, i think):

I threw your keys in the water, I looked back,
Theyd frozen halfway down in the ice.
They froze up so quickly, the keys and their owners,
Even after the anger, it all turned silent, and
The everyday turned solitary,
So we came to February.

First we forgot where wed planted those bulbs last year,
Then we forgot that wed planted at all,
Then we forgot what plants are altogether,
and I blamed you for my freezing and forgetting and
The nights were long and cold and scary,
Can we live through February?

You know I think Christmas was a long red glare,
Shot up like a warning, we gave presents without cards,
And then the snow,
And then the snow came, we were always out shoveling,
And wed drop to sleep exhausted,
Then wed wake up, and its snowing.

And February was so long that it lasted into March
And found us walking a path alone together.
You stopped and pointed and you said, "Thats a crocus,"
And I said, "Whats a crocus?" and you said, "Its a flower,"
I tried to remember, but I said, "Whats a flower?"
You said, "I still love you."

The leaves were turning as we drove to the hardware store,
My new lover made me keys to the house,
And when we got home, well we just started chopping wood,
Because you never know how next year will be,
And well gather all our arms can carry,
I have lost to February.

so, sometimes i feel that i also "lose" to february. the temperatures here have been solidly below freezing for the past several weeks and a rather impenetrable sheet of ice has covered the ground for the past week (feels like 10 weeks). i have cowered inside for too long, venturing out only to catch a shuttle to class in the morning or to race to my car.

when the temperatures made it above freezing today, i determined that i would put this miserable month in its place and take a long walk. as i walked, i took in the welcome sounds of the melting of snow and ice, and heard (or maybe just noticed) birds for the first time in a while. the dripping, trickling water and the bird-noise also seemed to be mounting some sort of challenge to this persistently unpleasant month of february. a slab of snow and ice slid off the slanting roof of a house i passed and crashed to the ground. i kicked at little mounds of ice that yesterday would have stood, frozen in place. today however, i destroyed them! as i stepped on unshoveled patches of sidewalk, my feet didn't want to slide beneath me, but the ice was sludgy and my feet sank part way into the mix. i felt more sure-footed, and my body felt strong again - i found it incredulous that just yesterday, i had been afraid to face the outdoors (that is, of course, until a herd of undergraduate cross country runners came pouding past me at a rather unbelievable pace and i felt rather slow and stodgy).

in the triumph i felt at being outside, and observing the sounds, sights, and texture of winter showing its first disappearance of the year, the six o'clock church bells began to toll and my sense of triumph only increased... i thought, like some piece of liturgy, "alleluia! the winter is gone!" (perhaps a little optimistic for mid-february, i do admit).

i suddenly remembered that tomorrow marks the first day of lent, the "winter," if you will, of the christian church calendar. yes, the church bells might be tolling "alleluia," but it is the last alleluia until easter.

my dear friend loves the four seasons, despite the fact that i spoke with her just today and she indicated that february might be taking its toll on her as well. several weeks ago, she told me that she thinks of winter as a sort of cleansing or purifying season - rather unpleasant at times, requiring patience of course, but in the end quite necessary.

the "lenten" practice of kneeling occurs during each service in the high christian churches. as i kneel during the confession and the consecration - surrounded by others who are kneeling - i think that humanity should kneel together more often. i think it makes us better people. when i kneel, i am in a posture that makes me deeply aware of my shortcomings, the failures of the human condition, the failures of governments, the atrocities of war. from kneeling, the congregation rises to "pass the peace." when i stand during this time, i determine to be a better person, to find more ways to help people, to be more courageous, and to believe in the good we humans are capable of. it is a profound thing, to one moment be kneeling and mourning the many things that remain amiss in this world, and the next moment be exchanging warm handshakes, hugs, and kisses with those around you, and to be offering and receiving the word "peace."

so, tonight i think to myself that i must truly embrace both the winter and the spring, i must be humble and yet wildly hopeful, i must kneel at times and then i must rise, and that lenten seasons and actions do indeed center, cleanse, and purify ourselves and our world.

snow day

today was a snow (and ice) day in baltimore, and the grand total accumulation of snow was... a whole 2 inches! here is a photo of the damage taken from our back porch, looking out on an elementary school playground. we have it on good authority that before the space was filled with concrete, it was a field where babe ruth was known to practiced.

this is my third winter in baltimore. during my first winter here, i scoffed at the panic that occurs in this city with the possibility of a "winter event." long lines form in the grocery stores and people stock up on bottled water and toilet paper. classes were cancelled one day during my first year here when not even half of an inch of snow fell. after all, i had lived in chicago for three years, where nothing surrenders to winter weather. the windy city, the "city of big shoulders," refuses to slow down for snow. the streets are plowed with skill, the el trains continue along their predictable, hovering, clacking routes. this winter however, i gladly join the hysteria (although i don't stock up on bottled water and toilet paper, mind you), and enjoy this snow day wholeheartedly.

my sister and I (ok, mostly my sister) cleaned, we cooked up a tasty moroccan dinner, had some friends over, drank wine, and unexpectedly stepped out of the seeiming normalcy of stress for the day.

i am thankful for days of grace.