Shifting Seasons

Friday night:

Clouds come in, chasing watered-down afternoon sun. Dinner in the dining hall: cold fish, vinegar-bathed salad, broccoli, roasted acorn squash. We talk about Slav t-shirts and inexplicable bouts of weeping.

I don't dress up for the Opera--still too cold from three hours outside maple syruping. Board a bus to the auditorium with thirty others, all of us feeling cultured and cheery. I cling to a hand rail in the back of the bus as it bumps and careens, taking the long way around. Inside, dying nuns and the French Revolution. When we exit the theater, snow is falling. The walk back to campus is shorter than we though, despite the weather.

Saturday morning (and beyond):

I wake up to pale sunlight and three strange boys sleeping in the common room. It's incredible how much room they take up (they are from the UPenn band, visiting for a game). Rain splatters spitefully. I leave for a coffee, wear long johns and take my umbrella and gloves. It's sunny again by the time I leave the coffee shop. I unzip my coat.

I eat lunch, wait for the bus to take me to the grocery store. A wind comes up, blows my hair into my face, brings more rain, again short-lived. Back in my room an hour later, I turn to the computer for ten minutes, look back out the window only to see snow being blown horizontally, obscuring the street below. It is March 1 and indecisive.

Something I ate did not agree with me. I take vitamin C, wait. Clouds scuttle hurriedly. Finally, at 4, the sun comes out, and does not leave. Outside it smells calm and springlike. Again, I unzip my coat, walk to the library, watch the clear and fading light of sunset through the window.