Objective correlative

I know my many weather-related posts must be less than thrilling for those elsewhere. But really, as if life didn't feel unstable and unpredictable enough around here, we've got...

Saturday, March 31 -- Temps in the high 70s, twenty degrees above normal. Tom's brother and family arrive for a spring break visit to Colorado, on a plane with people headed in to ski. They marvel at the warmth. The peak has less snow on it than at any point since last August; it looks like late summer up there.

Sunday, April 1 -- Temp is 86 degrees at mid-afternoon, thirty degrees above normal. The kids go to church in flip flops and sundresses and really do need to wave those palm branches to keep themselves cool. An afternoon hike with the cousins feels like an outing in July--on the East Coast. The cousins have a slumber party that evening and ask me to turn on the a/c, not realizing that houses in Colorado don't have a/c. We crank up the ceiling fans.

Monday, April 2, 3 am -- The wind is kicking up, and Tom gets up to shut windows all over the house and pull blankets over little bodies sleeping on top of the covers.

Monday, April 2, daylight -- Temps in the 40s, with a brisk, bitter wind. All except me and Edith, who are at school, head out for a cog railway trip to the top of Pike's Peak, although we can see that the peak is enveloped in clouds. They enter a snowstorm about a mile up the track and have to stop short of the peak, because of the 150 mph gusts at the summit.

Tuesday, April 3, 5 am -- Call comes in that Edith's school in on 2-hour delay. We look out the window. No snow (of course), but the rest of the day features temps in the 30s and light, steady precipitation, alternating between rain, hail, and sleet.

Wednesday, April 4 -- The radio says that highs today will be around 57. We open the shades--and there is a light blanket of snow on everything (of course). At noon the clouds finally roll out, and we see the mountain for the first time since Sunday. Fully snow-covered and majestic once again.

My eleventh-grade English teacher taught us to look for places in fiction where the weather patterns mirror the lives of the characters. Were I writing our family novel I could do something with this sequence, but it might seem too artificial.