perfect

The weather was without blemish today. Slightly chilled most of the day, sunshine following a day of soaking rain. Enough blooming trees to still punctuate the horizon with patches of colors in place we are not used to finding it. And enough leaves filling out the big hard woods to remind us of a world that defies the barrenness of winter.

I was outside most of the day and got a little bit of a burn. How gentle the air felt, and of course, no mosquitoes. Within a month, the air will be thick with them.

I have not been a faithful correspondent these past few weeks, and could never capture all the thoughts and words I mulled over but never posted. Wednesday night was a small evensong at church, only three of us, but we chanted a long psalm, sang two hymns and watched the bright flood of western light coming in from the back window, appropriate light for the service. The choir started practicing Bernstein's Chichester Psalms and Copeland's In the Garden for singing in May.

Yesterday was a long soaking rain, but just before it started, I divided a few hostas and moved a columbine plant and a summer phlox in the backyard. I've always considered it lucky to plant or transplant right before a rainfall.

I know sad things happened today. In fact, in the townlet, a neighbor accidentally killed his dog by rolling the car over her in the driveway. The colonel told me the story and said over and over how sad for this family to lose their old dog. He is building a fence around his backyard for the two Irish wolfhound puppies who come at the beginning of June. He told me that he misses Fred's singing.

The violence in Iraq and other places continues on, and I don't comment about it. I think about it, but find I have nothing to say here that is either edifying or thought-provoking.

I am uncomfortable that our government tries to hide the pictures of returning dead soldiers. Yes, families have a right to privacy. But does that right give the government the excuse to hide this from us? How can one trust a government that does not believe we cannot handle or be trusted with this visual, one aspect of a policy being carried out in our name?

But here it was a perfect day, to breath, and walk outside, to reflect on the beauty of the moment, the kindness that spring offers on such a day. I try to hold on to it, to remember how this day looked and felt, as if I could store its perfection in my memory, able to pull it back out at that moment when the weather is too hot or cold, to wet or too dry, so banal and usual that we walk through it without the gentle electricity felt today. I would love to have this experience filling a jar or box so that I can refer back to in some hour of sadness or pain.

But days such as this one, like music, indeed like blooms on the musky lilacs and viburnums, are incapable of storage or mental lamination. Still, I grab on to bits of things in my mind, thinking that when I am sitting in the dentist chair, or some interminably long meeting, I can remember this almost perfect day.