this is the first year since the year i graduated high school that i have been in folsom for spring. it starts with the smell that comes up from the wetlands, the neighbors' white blossomed trees, thick-odored, somewhere between heavy musk and excrement. it might be humid for a day or two, maybe some light rain rain, and then, bam, it's gentle warm weather and summer smell, without the deadly heat. it's a nice time of year. the bulbs go crazy, especially the daffodils. this year, paperwhites, and the freesias are heavily budded, but waiting for something. yesterday, a squirrel took a long drink from the hollow stone by the back door, the one paul ripped his face open on when were really little and still lived in the bay area. i can't believe we moved the stone, but then again, we moved everything.

i drove up to redding in the late afternoon. the sun goes down over the five, so gold it's almost platinum. the fruit trees are blooming still, but the end of the run, the feathery end before the fruit swells in heavily. farmers have moved cows onto their fields, and it's obvious why, the grass actually looks appetizing its so lush and green. the thick blades shimmer up the modest rises and catch deep velvet shadows on the way down again. i stop near willows, about ten miles out from where we used to get sanwiches when paul and i were kids (him, salami and cheddar, me, roast beef, no cheese, mom always got m&ms secretly and would share them only when we got restless, about an hour north). i bought iced tea from robby at 76, we talked about the road for a bit, the tea was better than i expected, floral, citrusy, not too cold. an old man holds the door as i leave and is missing one tooth, right next to the front two, it's a beautiful smile. i sit in the car and read the first two chapters of the wind-up bird chronicle, finally. it was the right place to start it. i turn on the car and head up north again, feel a pull to get there before it's dark, to not make them wait for dinner, but end up stopping again, god knows where, on the side of the five. there are long reeds growing in up around a small creek, and they are such a luminous, warm color that i can't believe that they exist, almost foolishly or even cartoon-like, in the same world as me. me, up to the eye-teeth in bad days, forced smiles, aversion, evasion, scraping-by me, holding it together for nana, for mom, and especially dad, then going down alone, just out into nothing, amnesia state, in-between, conscious forgetting of the present, sometimes yelling at the highway, unconscious conscious me, how can there be such nice reeds here? i put on my shoes and get out of the car, and crunch my way across the shoulder onto the rocky reddish soil until it is consumed by longer and longer grasses, then thick cattails and other types whose names i don't know. my shoes are all wrong, so i soak and scratch up my feet, but i feel better. some kind of black birds don't fly away until we're eye to eye, there are mice i can hear, but not see. i'm here, the reeds are here, it's starting to get dark, but i feel better, and go back to the car.

today, nana has been asleep since after breakfast. i did errands and went on a long, muddy walk with granddad. potatoes boiling for colcannon tonight, i've had the corned beef in the crock pot since ten. she's supposed to be up, it's the third week since chemo. the last treatment is this tuesday. the surgery was supposed to come right after, but the surgeon said he won't operate right away, maybe not even until mid-summer. no one will tell me why, when i ask nana just says she was upset at the doctor and laughs it off like it's not a big deal, but her voice breaks a little bit. i want my life back, she says, and then falls asleep next to me on the couch while i finish my first scarf. it looks like an armadillo and a sheep procreated in 2d. as a garment, unhandsome, but i'm pleased nonetheless.