As if that wasn’t enough, John and I had put trying to have our own baby on the backburner until we finished renovating our new old house. My father had moved into his fancy man cave which took over the old garage as well as the former secret room above it. John and I were settled into our new private sanctuary on the second floor of the main house, and we even had a locked door that protected us from the shared space below. We were waiting for a frost-free stretch so my sister Christine’s husband Joe could break ground on the new garage addition with a second private entrance for us.

A thaw in February in Marshbury, Massachusetts seemed about as likely as John letting go of his ridiculous wedding fantasies. I mean, what part of I don’t want to get married and risk screwing up our lives did he not understand?

Life was just too damn complicated.

John and I stared each other down.

“And now,” I said. “I’m officially late for school.”

Twelve minutes later, I hit my blinker. If my commute to Bayberry Preschool was a minute or two longer, the heat on my trusty old Honda Civic probably would have kicked in. I shivered as I hung a right off the main road, peered through the porthole I’d managed to scrape in the February frost, gazed up at the gray bruise of a sky.

The trees flanking the long uphill drive bowed under the weight of the heavy wet snow. “I feel ya,” I said. “February is no picnic for teachers either.”

“Love Stinks” was playing on the Marshbury classic rock radio station. Of course it was. I sang along with J. Geils at the top of my lungs, really belted out the part about how till the day that you die, love is going to make you cry.

I passed a totem pole made of brightly colored clay fish that now looked like they were dotted with huge fluffy white cotton balls. A row of painted plywood cutouts of teddy bears appeared to be wearing snow helmets.

Fortunately, the pavement had been well-sanded to protect our precious students and their designated drivers from any potential black ice lurking beneath. I managed to whip into one of the last remaining parking spaces in the upper level parking lot without taking out one of my colleagues’ cars.

I stayed put until the song was finished. You can never be too careful, so I liked to make sure I turned off my radio on a positive note. When the Turtles started singing, “Happy Together,” I breathed a sigh of relief. If fortune telling by radio wasn’t a thing, it should be.

“I’m not really late-late,” I said as I climbed out of my car. “More like fashionably late-ish.” I threw my teacher bag over my shoulder, skated across the parking lot in my purple UGG knock-offs.