Dragging myself out of bed this morning was a painful experience. The world outside was in a dark, stormy mood, and it didn’t help that my curtains were drawn, preventing any light from entering my room. I frowned into my pillow, allowing my alarm to chime for several minutes before I told Alexa to make it stop.
Ten minutes later, I threw on the same purple robe as yesterday and made my ascent upstairs to the kitchen for homemade baked oatmeal and a mug of black tea. I had a cough yesterday, but it was better this morning, but my head ached furiously from spending my entire first day in quarantine on my laptop. If the coronavirus doesn’t get me first, I have a feeling the blue light from my devices will. Thinking about the pile of assignments lined up for today didn’t make me feel any better.
In addition to leftover assignments from yesterday, I had work to complete in nearly every class from before and after school had been postponed. My newest band assignment was to upload a 30 second video of myself practicing my choice of music, which I thought was a fun task as far as homework goes. I decided to play the first few lines of Summer Music by Richard Rodney Bennett, which I had been preparing to take to the district solo and small ensemble festival in Mexico, MO this Saturday before the postponement.
Starting my day off with music made me feel better (although my cats hid in terror when I cracked my high C natural). After wiping down my flute, I plowed through some assignments but decided to take a break when my eyes started doing that twitchy thing after straining them in front of my screen (they are still currently doing the twitchy thing). Since I’d already practiced flute and had a virtual lesson planned with my teacher for later in the day, I did the next best thing I could think of: I laced up my electric blue tennis shoes and zipped up my purple rain jacket to go for a walk.
Upon stepping out onto my front porch, the taste of humid air and the smell of damp earth hit my senses. I started walking down the driveway but didn’t get far. The first of spring’s flowers had opened their faces to the world overnight. My favorite were the little purple crocuses with their striped petals. I had to take pictures.
After filling my phone’s photo gallery with pictures of water droplets clinging to flower petals and creative shots of trees, I proceeded on my way. It was around 1 p.m. and there were few passersby out and about. I passed a woman in an orange vest pedaling her bike up a hill and several people walking their dogs. A plump robin hopped from leaf to leaf and birds twittered, chattered and squeaked energetically overhead.
I used to build little fairy houses in my backyard when I was in elementary school, and today would have been a fairy house day. The ground was soft, so I would have been able to work quickly without running into clumps of dried soil. There was just something enchanting about this morning. As I walked I saw patches of bright green clovers glittering with beads of rain, and I heard the gentle burble of water as it trickled down the gutters and into storm drains.
The day had a certain heaviness to it, in part because of the humidity, but even though the sky was overcast, I could sense the beginnings of spring. When I returned home to my desk and saw today’s google doodle, I realized what I had missed: today was the first day of spring. It may have gone by quickly, and I spent most of my time doing homework, but my walk was still a relaxing interlude from everything that’s been happening in our world right now.
How has the second day of social distancing been? Let us know in the comments below.[
