Traditionally, those are the days seven days before and seven days after the winter solstice and here they were in Columbia, balmy and calm, filled with peace, temperatures in the high 70's. The day before I took James for ice cream and this morning I walked the Old Shandon neighborhood of cozy cottages, porches filled with rattan furniture, a park with a large brown dog dozing on top of a picnic table. students in shorts and backpacks going to class. I am a student again in Williamsburg, carrying an armload of books and notebooks, even a newspaper to the garden of the Governor's Palace in the never ending Spring, full of tulips, jonquils, fragrant boxwoods. Sometimes I rode the Colonial Williamsburg bus driven by the boy who sat next to me in history class, where a professor emeritus read his famous lectures from his yellowed notes. I took Zack and Shane for ice cream today. Zack always asks for ice cream and I told him we would go on a special day. Today was the special day.
In the evening I drove home to Spartanburg where it was raining, cold and dark. Tomorrow, there will be up to eight inches of snow in the mountains and we may have a smattering as well.
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