We wake to a morning of deep cold and sun-sparkling fresh snow.

Illness has moved through my daughter; her eyes are merry again as she laughs with her sister. March 1: we’re ready to greet the remainder of the winter, the coming weeks of snow and cold that inevitably will end in mud.

These small and temporary illnesses have their place, too, pulling us inside and quieter. In a fever, I dream of a book I’m reading, how memory lies deep within our bodies. As if in a strange journey, the fever draws me into the mysteries of flesh and blood, of synapsis and neuron, and I’m a little child again, holding a paper doll. The slick paper is tangible beneath my fingertips.

The dream ends, and I’m here again, mother to two daughters who are laughing as they do math homework together.

The linear view of time may be an illusion, but it’s one I’m happy to join again, finished with illness and fever, ready for March, green, spring.

When the winter chrysanthemums go,
There’s nothing to write about
But radishes.

— Basho

Photo by Molly S./Hardwick, Vermont