But The Snow Went Away Fast

By Friday it was all gone. April snow is fickle snow, it comes and goes very quickly. We're just as glad. I had a bad weekend, writing motivation-wise, it wasn't until this afternoon that I took my notebook and a blanket out into the warm spring sunshine and lolled upon the grass and wrote.

April 8--Georgian Bay Islands, Ontario. Will and Alby knew that they were luckier than the rest of their friends. They lived the closest to the park so they treated the shores like their own personal backyard, and now that they were twelve and had earned their Red Cross lifesaving cards, they could take their canoe down to Georgian Bay by themselves. Alby's mom wasn't so sure she liked the idea so she bought them one of those cheap prepaid cellphones from Walmart, put it in not one but two Ziplock bags, and insisted that they wear it and their life vests "at all times." Knowing that to argue would only mean she'd refuse to let him go at all, Alby agreed and he had told Will that he needed to agree too. And they had to do what they said. Alby knew that his mother was perfectly capable of driving down the shore and sitting there with her binoculars waiting to check up on them. "Next she'll make us wear helmets," Will said from his perch in the stern of the canoe. Alby looked over his shoulder and said, "For Pete's sake, Will, don't give her more ideas." Alby had seen a flash from a hilltop a mile or so back and he'd been sure that had been his mom checking up on them. Will snorted and went back to paddling. "Your mom worries too much." But he sometimes wished that his mom would worry just a bit; she didn't seem to care when, or even if, he came home.

April 9--Sant'Antonino, Corsica. Guido sat in the shade of his small courtyard dozing after lunch. Siesta was a tradition that he could get behind. It was civilized, this two-hour break in midday to let a meal digest and to recharge the inner man after working all morning. He had spent a few months with his cousin Luigi's boy, Paulo, in America last year and this was one of the things he missed. In America no one paid attention to the noon meal, it was just a bother to stop the frantic moving and working to bolt down a plastic meal delivered by a robot through a hole in the side of a building as you whizzed by in your car. Then you gulp down the food and rinse it with some fizzy soda or designer water before hurrying right back to the job. No hoe-cooked bread with a bit of cheese made by a neighbor, someone you know and trust. No olives grown for centuries on trees that have watched over you your whole life. No glass (or two) of a strong red wine that would fortify you to work the rest of the day and was made right in your own village from grapes you grew yourself. No, this was the best way to live. In America, life was barbaric.

So that's it for the weekend. I hoped to get more submitted but only managed to send in a story to NPR for their 3-Minute Story contest. Wouldn't it be cool if I won?
--Barbara