Sunday School.

I think we have to call it like it is: three months from now we'd be saying it was a heat wave, and a heat wave that hung on and on. We're seven days in and the forecast has seven more like this. Ten more, if you want to believe that far ahead. Next Sunday, Monday and Tuesday -- the 25th on, if you will, and even if you won't -- certain of the fancies dip us into the forties at night, which may be enough for morning fires in the shed. Still, they put us back in the seventies during the day, which is what? Ten degrees above average? Fifteen? What we're having is an instant bloom: my cherry tree bloomed overnight. Everything's blooming and wilting in days, not weeks. We're living in a time-lapse film. I mowed the lawn. I found a gladiola, of all things, three inches out of the ground in the front garden. Yes, it's beautiful out there. Yes, we grilled in the back yard tonight for the Sunday Roast. Yes, these open windows all these nights satisfy some core urge I'd nearly forgotten pulled at me. But aren't -- weren't -- we supposed to be ascetic a little longer? All this feels unearned. Undeserved. If I celebrated Lent, I'd say we were most certainly doing it wrong.