“The world is mud-luscious and puddle-wonderful.”

The day is spring lovely. The air is warm and still and the sky cloudless. This morning I bought some pansies for the basket on the front steps. They are hardy enough flowers for these cold nights when the temperature still dips to the high 30′s. We have had a fire warning in effect for the last few days. As it hasn’t rained, there have been several brush fires, and the fear is there may be more.

When I was a kid, I always loved the coming of the warm weather when I could get rid of the pounds of winter clothing I’d endured for months. Away went the scarf and the mittens and the layers under my winter coat. Sometimes my snow boots became mud boots when the spring rains arrived and the softened ground turned to mud. On the way home from school, we walked across the field below our street, and it oozed with mud and water. We loved it; my mother hated it. Sometimes a boot got stuck, and while trying to pull it out, the other one would get stuck. That’s how my socks got dirty and muddy.

My bike tires left grooved ruts when I’d ride through the muddy grass, and the bottoms of my pant legs were flecked with blotches of mud spots like brown poker dots. The ruts were tell-tale signs to my father that we had used his grassy hill even though we had been told over and over not to use the hill but to walk down the steps with our bikes. That was the silliest request we’d ever heard. What self-respecting kid on a bike would ever bypass a hill for steps? We never did.

“He’s a gentleman: look at his boots.”

Most times I am a quick study and learn easily. Yesterday I overdid and last night I woke up every hour or so in pain, and it’s still here this morning. I guess I keep trying to find the line between okay and ridiculous. Obviously I went over that line yesterday. I do have an addendum about yesterday and locked doors. My plowman was here when I left for an appointment. I told him the de-ice stuff for the steps was inside the house by the door as was his check. He was fine with that and I left. When I got home, I was locked out again. My plowman had noticed my storm door was ajar and he’s a good guy so he closed it. I called my friend Tony and told him he’d need a step ladder. I’m thinking of putting a stepladder permanently against the back porch. In the summer I’ll put plants on it so people will think it a gardening design. How pretty to see the morning glory vines climbing the ladder.

Today is a white day. The sky is white. The trees have a layer of white from the wet snow, and the ground is covered. The sun came out yesterday and melted some of the snow. Last night it froze. Ruts of ice are on the sides of the road and on the pathways. Going out makes for a strange sort of dance of stepping in one place then moving to the side then across and back all with tiny steps which remind me of the Mikado.

I seldom stayed home from school. We, my brother and sisters and I, were all pretty much a healthy bunch. We walked to school on the coldest or the wettest or the snowiest day of the year. It didn’t matter.

This time of year presented to every kid the greatest of all challenges: putting on and taking off boots. Back then they were rubber and they went over our shoes. In the morning, at home, my mother would hold the boots while we pushed and pushed until our shoes were all the way inside then she’d tuck our snow pants into the top of the boot. When we got to school, we’d sit on the floor to pull off our boots. Usually our shoes came with them, but that was just fine. We’d pull out our shoes, put them on and go into the classroom. All of that was the easy part. It was getting dressed to go home which presented the biggest challenge. If the boots were wet, the shoes just wouldn’t go inside all the way, and the bottom part of the boot would flop around. Pushing the shoes in with my hands sometimes worked, sometimes didn’t. Lots of days I’d walk home in my shoes, the boots in my school bag. My mother was never happy when I came home with wet shoes, wet socks and cold feet. Neither was I.