Winter blues...

February 28

I always knew I didn’t like January or February... but I had forgotten why when we moved south.  So fast the soul forgets about the perils of yesterday when you’re happy!  But, we're back here again, back to the land of snows.  And I haven’t been feeling well for so long now, that I have forgotten how to smile wide and hard inside.

 

The big square table hasn’t been used in a long time either—not for breakfast, or lunch or dinner any more, like we used to.  It was always a happy table back at the little white cottage, a throne of sorts where we would enjoy hours eating, or reading, or just looking at the glories outside at any time of day, any time of the year. 

I used to embellish it with whatever I had on hand… little things that make me happy, flowers, candles, a plant or two, books...  

But now the table sits in a room all to itself with windows that overlook the street on one side and to a neighbor’s house on the other.  It is not a pleasant thing to have to look at your neighbor’s old car parked across your window... so close, that you can almost reach out and touch it, or his huge trailer on the back, always erasing the sky from my sight.

And thus, I can’t find a place to ‘land’ here—so it seems.  A place where I feel comfortable enough, and happy enough to just sit and be.  It has to be, of course, a place from where I can look outside and contemplate the world outside my windows.  I work upstairs, on the second floors, where my only view are the rooftops and the revelation of the far away mountains.  For that I am thankful.  There’s a single tree too, tall enough to be seen from the bay window where I sit and work, and sometimes a flock of birds would fly by to it and rest for a while on thin naked branches. But that's about it.

 

March 2

By early evening every drop of snow had melted away. Rivers of water poured forth from above and below cleaning the skies, cleaning the earth.  And thus, the wheel of time is turning.  If I look outside my window I can corroborate it.  Shadows are gathering up in little cumulus of light, and the slant of cheerless wintry glow that surfaces around mid afternoon over the somnolent garden is slowly shifting... slowly; very slowly... things are changing.  

If I pay close attention to my surroundings, I can see only blue against the last remnants of white, and the evening light is promising; it carries within itself a faint intonation of spring...  Hope!

"For in this hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what he sees? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience" (Romans 8:24-25).