It’s been nice having warm weather again.  Birds chirping.  Breezes blowing flowery perfumes and pheromones.  Reminding you of days of carefree joy.  Like bike riding and pathologically hopeful crushes.  Like your first date with the girl you’ll want to keep forever.

Still it seems kind of early for spring birds, risky even.  I wondered if the temperatures suddenly dropped, there’s no way they could fly to somewhere warm.  Would they all freeze to death?  This is March in Michigan, after all.  It could snow tomorrow.

There were some perfect moments for me this week.  Like reading quietly with the kids for the first time, quelling my compulsive gaming habits and internal stresses.  Just like I imagined it when they were babies.  Is it too much to hope we still do this when they’re in high school?

Afterwards, the kids wanted to exercise with me.  We did some push-ups and sit-ups together.  Some jiu jitsu techniques and submission by tickling, for fun, fitness and physical bonding, but ulteriorly for self-defense and rape protection.  Fathers think about these things because we know what our evil doppelgangers are capable of.

“Just two things,” I tell them both, “I want you to be smart and I want you to be strong.”

On one of the warmer days, we played outside.  Sun Su and Ooseung rode around the cul-de-sac in the newly welcoming sunshine.

There was one moment though, where Ooseung was scootering across a driveway sidewalk when the neighbor’s car started backing up too quickly.  I was too far away to do anything other than yell.

“Whoa!  WHOA!!  W-W-WATCH OUT!!  OOSEUNG WATCH OUT!!”

It was like a bad dream where you can’t make a sound, only in this case I could but they couldn’t hear me.  I even stuttered.  Neither Ooseung nor the driver stopped until they were well past the potential point of collision.  They barely missed each other.

I talked to her again about car awareness and back up lights, while torturing myself with alternate realities and life-changing  probabilities.  I couldn’t look at the neighbor as she backpeddled about her dangerously careless backpeddling, “Oh, I thought I saw her cute pink shirt back there.”  Righteous anger wasn’t mine today, though.  Maybe this was my fault.  Or worse, maybe this was one of those unavoidable almosts.

The kids raced around the cul-de-sac when it was clear while I stood sentry for cars.  I kicked the remains of a snow pile at them playfully as they giggled on by.  Their laughter made me wonder things – about their future loves and heartbreaks.  About other unavoidable possibilities.

My shoes got wet and I had studying to catch up on, but we stayed out as long as we could and enjoyed an otherwise almost perfect day.

It could snow tomorrow.