Winter Wonderland

Overnight three inches of snow turned the world into a white fairytale landscape. Every tree and bush swathed in an inch or more of cottony white, all the grass quilted in shining whiteness under the blue blue sky, everything new and pristine and perfect! Would that our lives could somehow look as wonderful. For one whole long morning, we were captives of Currier and Ives, frozen in the crispness of pre-Christmas expectation. How delightful! I wanted to get outdoors, to walk and breathe in the joy of just seeing all that splendor.

Yet you know that buried beneath the picture postcard scenery lies the mud, the dirt, the aging, sagging imperfections of the world of yesterday. Almost without perception, clouds begin to fill the cheerful sky. Another storm is brewing. You gaze at the now platinum trees vividly outlined against the pewter sky to the west. It seems surreal. Details you never bothered to notice suddenly jump out at you, screaming for attention. A squirrel nest of leaves clump in the top of a nearby maple tree. Sap buckets hang precariously tilted on the trunk beneath. Crows caw angrily at the drop in temperature, darting away from a raccoon carcass they have decimated in a nearby ditch.

You realize tiny white flakes have begun to swirl through the air, dropping a gauze curtain on the happy scenes of just moments ago. So like life. One moment you are celebrating some joyous wedding, some new birth, some family outing, time spent with special people. The next you are battling some difficulty your actions did not precipitate. You find yourself sick or alone or facing some unwanted change.

I find it helpful to keep in mind that the wind will change again. This too shall pass, and likely as easily as the sunshine. How important to treasure the moments of wonder and fully appreciate them while they are here, to think on them when the icy winds blow. How good to know that seasons change with regularity and spring will soon come. I am already thinking about drifts of tulips and daffodils and crocuses and yellow forsythia bushes. Yes, spring will be here soon. I smile as I trudge home through the stinging snow.