March Madness

I'm sitting at my tiny kitchen table looking out over a beautiful day of sunshine, blue skies, feathery clouds, and a temperature of 57 degrees. A snow storm is predicted for the end of the week. Welcome to our very own version of March Madness.

While tall, athletic young men run up and down a basketball court, our temperatures here in the Northeast during the month of March run up and down the scale from well below freezing to 60 degrees. One day there is snow on the ground, and the next folks are jogging along with only an occasional puddle to splash through. It's enough to make you wonder why we live here. It's not as if we don't have enough stress in our lives (just watch the news for 5 minutes). I guess the reason I don't join the snow birds from my church that make a run for Florida or other points south right after Thanksgiving and don't come back until April is that it's that very uncertainty that drives us all crazy which challenges me and keeps me on my toes. It keeps me present to what is going on today - not tomorrow or yesterday, but today, and it makes me that much more grateful when we do get a day pushing 60 and I see the tip of a shoot coming out of the ground, or the first few tiny green buds poking out of a branch. It gives me something to look forward to, to hope for. It teaches me gratitude for what I already have and what Mother Nature promises year after year to grace me with again and again.

Today I ventured out to the store for the first time since my surgery and sitting in the car, with the window down and the sunshine kissing my face, I felt such gratitude that words escaped me. Every ray of sunshine is a blessing, just as every raindrop and snowflake. It's all there to remind us that life would get pretty boring if we had to live the same day over and over again, kind of like that movie "Groundhog's Day." I know some folks would be fine with sunshine and warm temps every day of the year (or almost), but I would miss the breathtaking beauty of autumn, and the first greens of spring, and the riot of colors in summer, and the first snowfall of winter. So today as I enjoyed my outing, mindful of the other shoppers who were stocking up just in case that snowstorm hits later in the week, I just closed my eyes and enjoyed what I had right there in that moment, knowing in my heart that it might go away for a while, but it was definitely making a comeback soon.

And so it is.