the ocean always dreamed blue dreams

It's snowing. I've dreamed of this day for seventeen years. That's how long I've lived in Texas. That's how long I've missed the snow.

Yesterday was a l-o-n-n-g day. A student came to take a test after school, and two boys came to put my smart board knock-off together. They were hilarious. It took them two and a half hours.We called the janitor one time who came and brought them a phillips head screwdriver. I was grading papers and concentrating fairly intently on that. Occasionally they would drop some large metal piece and I would nearly have a heart attack which they found amusing. At one point I told them I would get them something. "What would you like," I asked.One of them said "I'd like something that doesn't have any monetary value." "Oh, what is that?" I asked. "C's love?" That's his girlfriend, also a student of mine. "No, I already have that," he said. "I want a 100 this six-weeks." Oh. "How about a gift card from Borders," I asked hopefully. Well, I can dream, can't I? They laughed. "We don't read, miss," they said. One of the said, "I downloaded 'Fahrenheit 451,'" he said, "until I couldn't find a something for a question I was trying to answer and then I had to go out and get it." "Why?" I cried to the elements. "Why can't any of my students like to read?" "They smiled good-humoredly at me and went on with their work.

I got home around 7 after stopping at Wendy's for some spicy chicken nuggets, took my son somewhere, came back and curled up on the couch. It was lovely I went out again at 10 to pick him up, came home and fell into bed. The weathermen were waxing ecstatically about the professed snow and I was highly skeptical. I feel bad for weathermen here. They want so badly for something to happen and nothing ever does.

I woke up, got out of bed, dragged a comb across my head, opened the front door and there it was, a street full of it, tree limbs full of it, a sky full of it. I drove to work with a smile on my face.

There is no window in my little cubbyhole classroom, but there is a large window at the end of the hall so I could look out it periodically throughout the day and watch it as it fell and fell.

Five kids were absent in my first period and we were all very quiet and contemplative. They are working on a synthesis essay, a practice one with a fairly simple prompt over a topic with which they are fairly familiar. But it is the first time they have done an essay like this, so they had a lot of questions. We had already worked on a thesis statement, topic sentences and a concluding statement, but they weren't sure how to discourse over the stated themes. By the end of the period they had a better idea of what they needed to do and another paragraph under their belt.

And it was still snowing.

The end of the day finally arrived. I drove home under a drift of falling snow. And now I'm home, dreaming of freezing temperatures and a possible snow day. It could happen.

Sometimes when I have a lot to do the day seems to stretch out like an undulating desert, and I'm there in the middle plodding with no oasis in sight. But at the end of the interminable day, when everything important is accomplished, I walk down the stairs and through the rooms with a sense of well-being welling up from the depths. Everything is right with the world. Browning probably said it better, but here is my offering to the gods of poetry.

my house,
when my mind is
roiling and windswept
and filled with shrill muted acrimony
is not a haven, but a burden
and I, Atlas.
But when the winds calm
and day is done
the porch swept
and the lights pooling softly in the darkend street.
I'm home

(It's still snowing, and I'm still smiling.)

Qimissung