Spring Days

Spring is here—and Friday—and it’s that delightful brief interlude of cool mornings and warm afternoons. We continue along the path of life, with year end festivals and recitals and parties. I continue to be trying to tuck myself into some corner of the kitchen, or maybe out on the periphery under a tree with a book.

We are planning a trip to Taiwan this summer, our first big adventure after covid, and time is ticking by as we approach take-off. I’m paralyzed by indecision and the foreignness of making travel plans. How does one do this again? I’m occasionally googling vague topics like “best things to do in Taipei” and “best airplane snacks” and “typhoons,” while spending most of my time agonizing over minutiae like what books should I pack for the kids? Shall we take this opportunity to begin the excellent Wrinkle in Time series? Should I order this extremely cute “travel” backpack for baby Junia? Would a true tiger mom insist on bringing math workbooks? How much floss do you think we should bring? Because of course, it will be extremely difficult to locate and purchase floss in a major metropolitan city like Taipei, and it’s always best to be prepared. But this is the dream! The dream of gallivanting around the world with Lowly Worm and Karen Brewer and Goku and a smushed up Snickers bar in our backpacks, fresh passports ready to be stamped.

I’m still clinging onto May and these routines from this past school year. Twice a week I pick up Junia and then send off the two older feral goblins into one of their activities. Hanging out with her during the winter was more precarious and chilly—wet boots and little puddles of silt-water, the forgotten mitten at the library—but with this warm weather and sunshine, and also the guilt-free-free-from-planning-“planning” time, I am relishing these gentle moments of being occupied with my favourite things. Snacks, frolicking dogs coming to sniff our snacks, old board books dug out from older siblings that come with their own whoosh of nostalgia, my own journal ready to capture some of the juices of life, before it crystallizes and disintegrates into fairy dust in the wind. It’s another sort of dream, I suppose, the adventures that are in front of me here with giggles and wet kisses and running off to chase after the sparrows. It’s all a gift, the marrow of life.