Spring hopes eternal

I keep saying the next book will be a comedy. Spending so much time in the one I am currently writing- "The Kandee Widows"- set in North Dakota right after the first world war, I feel down. I want an escape. I want to escape.

Maybe the real trouble is that it is almost springtime. Having made it through winter, one wants the world to look different, be different. Warmer, better, a different challenge than those failed before. A challenge suffused with hope. Most emigrants left their countries in the spring hoping for something better. They would settled down in a false hopeful green of that season; believing the grass will always be this high, this lush, the freshets ever flowing, the winds balmy.

We've been in our house for almost nine years now. I have never lived in a single house this long. I wish we could move. Plan a new garden, tear a wall out, paint. It would be a better place where I'd grow sweeter tomatoes, I'd have space to plant more fruit trees. The house would be filled with light. My office would be warm. The geese would have their own pond instead of a bright blue wading pool.

It is warmer this week. Almost seventy degrees yesterday. I should be glad I only visit the North Dakota February in the novel and I get to step out into California sunshine and the days' lengthening light. I think it is the season, however, to be dissatisfied. It is time to travel, to look beyond, to hope for something better and to believe it exists.