I went to a writers conference Friday and Thursday. I would like to do a post, but my laptop computer keeps shutting off (something wrong with the cord connecting it to the outlet I assume), and I don't want to loss what I am working on midway through.

I'm not however too concerned over the possibility of losing any of the content of this posting to say I hope I can post soon post :)  And I even managed to get in a photo!  I think as long as the cord remains at just the right angle....perfectly still....

       My thoughts and prayers are with Japan and her people.

    The white birds are back!  It looked like hundreds, light glinting off their wing, shimmering against a blue sky as they flew in wide circles. Gliding in a peaceful spiral down to land in the field opposite the street I live on. Just birds I know, snow geese, or perhaps the whistling swan, nothing exotic, and nothing unusual about seeing them here. But I had written a flock of white birds into my story years ago, before I knew there were any around here, before I had ever seen them.  So for me, the sight of them is as if a page from my story has come to life, has come to visit me.  It electrifies my soul. It gives me inspiration and courage. A whisper with a thousand wings behind it, 'keep going.' So yes, just birds landing in a field. Ordinary... but also magic, like the birds in the story where ordinary, but the moment contained magic. And I'll take my encouragement and joy where I can. Though I do feel silly for how excited and happy the sight of them makes it, I don't resist or hesitate, I dive right in.

    In a week or two they will be gone; their migration taking them northward. Even if I were to strip them of their symbolic meaning for me, they would still carry the herald of Spring with them.

    I'm so grateful for March. I recall those colorful cutouts my elementary teachers put on their classroom walls. I loved the lion and the lamb, and the teachers saying, "March comes in like I lion and goes out like a lamb." This was soon followed on the walls by a parade of tulips, daffodils, yellow chicks, and bunnies. 
    March still has cold days, and often brings snow, but there will be some warmer days when you can smell spring in the air.  One of peonies is pushing its red tips through the hard dirt. Some of my tulips and daffys are stretching their long green fingertips up through the dirt testing the air to see if it time to come out. I don't know if they are excited to be above ground, to feel the sunlight. But I am excited to see them. I am never in the mood for planting in late fall, but come early spring, I am so glad that I spent hours kneeling in the dirt, digging holes to tuck in little rock and onion shaped things.

  This month also brought with it an end to our being sick.  After two weeks it is finally unusual for one of us to break into a series of hacking coughs. We missed Valentine's day. The three of us were together, but on the sofa, under blankets. Instead of cards, flowers, and sharing a box of chocolate, we had cough drops, boxes of tissues, and a small plastic bucket lined with a grocery store bag, for used tissues, and in case anyone needed to throw-up. My son used it for that several times. We also kept a pump dispenser of hand sanitizer on the end table. Ah fun times.

   I am overtaken with impatience for Spring, for flowers, dirty hands, and buckets of dirt. But this is important time. I need to work on improving my writing. And also my house cleaning was a bit neglected while we were sick. So it isn't time for rushing outdoors with a shovel. No, that time really isn't until May. Now I need to transplant piles of clothing to more suitable locations, water the kitchen floor, divide paragraphs, and weed out unruly sentences.