In Like a Lion

This is the time of year when you’ll see a girl in spaghetti straps, her hair swept off her neck and piled high on her head strolling with her boyfriend who’s sporting shorts and sandals right next to the family in coats, hats, scarves and carrying umbrellas.

The weather makes me feel slightly schizophrenic. I’ll start the day in a sweat suit on my way to the gym at 5:30, shivering and hoping not to run over any squirrels or bunny rabbits that I can’t see in the fog. When I get showered and dressed an hour and a half later, I’m pulling on a turtleneck and socks even though out the window I can see the sun shining and the trees positively bursting with blossoms. Oh, you poor trees, completely fooled into thinking the time is right to show how pretty you can be, and flirting with the warmth and the bees. You’ll be twice as dismal when the late freeze comes and takes all your pink and purple away. Sometimes patience is a virtue. I know better and so out comes my zip-up hoodie. And I’m right. Until ten after two and I’m pulling my sweater away from my neck, wondering why I’m so warm.

Last night my daughter calls right before dinner to tell me that she looked everywhere and can’t find the skirt she needs for the assembly. All the other girls found theirs and she’s the only one. She’s going crazy trying to figure out what to do and did I think I could make her one? By lunchtime the next day? I run out, pick her up from the mall and take her to the fabric store that screams GOING OUT OF BUSINESS on every available surface but since everything is at least 50% off, I don’t mind too much. We find a red plaid that will work and I make her a skirt, forgetting about all the work I need to get done. Because I can and she needs it. And because the one I made is two inches longer than the one’s the other girls are wearing and covers up a little more leg.

Somehow, I feel like I won something.