17 JAN 26

Four-thirty alarm...

Forty-five minutes later a clean slingshot down 70 towards KC...

Patience snoozes the first two hours as a band of cream floats behind us in the east... rising sun stutters into a sky of dark lavender filled with blitzing snow flurries... blasting us further west...

In the seven o'clock hour the sun has made progress... full gold light splashing snow-dusted farmland to a little Baroque cello...

Arrive early as planned... drop in at the local library for Patience to fix her hair into a ponytail and prowl a little...

And back to the Kansas City Irish Center for an extensive workshop with the renowned Irish dancing Gardiner brothers of Ireland...

For the next four and a half hours while I sit with my books and watch from the catwalk balcony of the centenarian structure... Patience has “the time of her life”... games and choreography and dances and creativity discussion and eating lunch with other girls from around Missouri and Kansas and Illinois...

After they've finished filming with energetic enthusiasm from the brothers for all their fine work... Patience stands in line for a photo op... “Keep up what you're doing!” they tell her warmly in their light Irish brogue... “You're doing really well!”...

We hurry back out into late sunlight and the cold... windchill dipping to about two... for the long drive home...

After recapping the entire day and all her thoughts in substantial detail... Patience sighs in wistfulness... “I wish that workshop never ended”... as we zoom back east into low sloping hills and Arctic winds...