Goodbye to now

The day is perfect, and it's only 7:15 a.m. The sky is both transparent and blue. Pristine. Perfect. If I looked long and hard enough, I would see eternity. The snow on Mount Madison and Mount Adams is melting, enough so that there is more rock visible than snow on the former. There are hints of green in trees, buds waiting to pop and explode ot life in celebration of spring. Green grass is sprouting through browns patches of death, and six cords of wood await my sweat and muscle. But no complaints there, as it's the perfect physical foil for the mentally draining days stuck inside a school.

Today, I'll enjoy the final day of vacation before heading back to Room 109 tomorrow for the final seven weeks of the year. But now, in the solitude of the morning I force the future aside. Or attempt to. A clock ticks beside me. My boys' toys litter the lawn outside. A pair of robins walk in the yard, sprinting, stoppping, sprinting, stopping, their rusty breasts, yellow beaks and black backs and heads a reminder that winter has left for now.

I'll miss the view, this corner of my home where I grae, read, write, play, draw and sometimes eat. I'll miss knowing that if I walk outisde I'll hear not some mother scolding child, but Mother Nature's waning patience. I'll miss chores on m y land, boys running along earthen paths in the woods, nights on the patio, alone but for the stars and air.

My present is filled with that which won't always be; I'd best learn the lesson well and enjoy the myriad of presents of each day as they come.

I don't look at this as night, though. The optimism in me instead looks for dawn. The whole man realizes that every end is followed by a beginning, dawn can follow only night, mountaintops exist thanks only to the valleys, the sun feels warmest after winter's chill. So the present that will never again be from my view is new rather than old, a start rather than that which is finished.

Footsteps upstairs, bare and quick, patter across the floor. My morning ends. Theirs, and ours, begins.