Blowing in the Storm

Skiing with my friend Andy, back when it was sunny and cold 

For three days, it is spring. Forty-five degrees, the sun high and bright, the backroads thawing and softening. I drive home through the first mud of the new year, the familiar thrill of finding the perfect line amongst the ruts. Or at least the line that doesn’t get me stuck. Rivulets of water run across the road, glistening in the sun. Following an old flatbed truck loaded with hardwood logs. The driver doesn’t seem worried about the mud, he just plows through, the truck swaying side-to-side, making ruts of its own.

I’m with my son. We’ve got the windows down and we’re singing along to Slaid Cleaves doing Black T-Shirt, not much caring if anyone hears us which is easy because we know no one can. Driving and singing, driving and singing. We’re always driving and singing. We pass the same farmhouse I wrote of a couple weeks back, the one with the laundry hung to dry. There’s more laundry; this time, it’s all sheets. There’s a blue one and a couple green ones and one that’s faded red. They look worn, though I can’t really tell; it could just be the house itself, which doesn’t look like the sort of place that’s getting many deliveries of new bedding, if you know what I mean.

They say to write what you know, and I guess that’s why I keep writing the same damn things over and over again: Driving with my boy. Skiing. Cold and cows. Laundry on a line strung across the porch of an old farmhouse. I guess maybe any of us might find our lives to sometimes feel so narrow, though of course we’re fools to believe it, and I guess maybe it’s worth being reminded of that once in awhile, too.

The skies have closed back up. It’s spitting rain now. There’s weather coming. Wind and snow. I’ll fill the tractor with diesel for plowing, top off the cows’ water in case we lose power. Tomorrow I’ll probably pass that farmhouse again. Already, I can imagine laundry blowing in the storm.