I'm almost sure there was snow on this forsythia yesterday. Maybe it is some elaborate April Fool joke by Mother Nature. It's the sort of thing my own mother would have pulled. Some people claim Christmas, my husband's favorite holiday was Halloween...my mother loved April Fool's Day, and I was her favorite target. My Girl Scout troop came for a sleep-over; my mother hid one of everyone's shoes. In high school, when girls wore six crinoline slips under poodle skirts (a la Happy Days) and we all sat in groups on the quad grass for lunch, I opened my brown paper sack (we were too cool for lunch boxes) and found folded newspapers and scraps of wood, carefully wrapped like sandwiches in waxed paper. Boy, did I get strange looks. The year I was a sophomore, my mother woke me, said we were running late and I had to hurry with breakfast. I dashed around and went across the street to whistle for Linda, a senior, so we could walk to the bus stop. I whistled and waited...no Linda. Finally I went to the door and knocked...and waited. Finally Linda's mother came to the door, hair disheveled and pulling on her robe. "What do you want?" "Isn't Linda going to school today?" "Of course she is, but it's only six o'clock, Diane." My mother was surreptitiously pulling weeds in the front yard, watching me make an April Fool of myself, and laughing like a loon. Mother would have loved snow/no snow.
