While the earth remains....
After all the hullabaloo and build up to welcoming in a fresh-faced, brand new year, already 1/12 of it has just about slipped by. Like the raising of a houseful of children, time moves slow day by day, but at the speed of light when I look back.
To say January has brought with it an abundance of snow would be putting it mildly. White mounds of it tower all around us, piled up on itself til there's nowhere left to go. And yet it still comes down. Most of us were giddy as kids when it started up, back in November. Now the only ones still singing its praise are those earning double-time pay, trying to keep the roads clear.
Tonight I'm snug inside. Inside where it's almost time to turn back the covers and snuggle into my warm bed. Outside is a snow globe of winter wonderland, complete with miniature evergreen trees, and the glow of lamplight casting a shimmer on icy streets and sidewalks. Looking out on this albeit lovely scene, I'm thankful to be this side of the window where it's warm.
Days that run into more days of the same, months of the same, make me wonder - will spring ever come again? It will. One cold, wintry day at a time won't seem fast, but when I blink and turn around, a couple of months will have slipped by. Trees will be shamelessly showing off their brand new yellow-green baby leaves. Daffodils and such will be bravely poking their heads up through the quite possibly still frozen ground, checking to see if it's safe to come out. Red-breasted robins will be doing their courting dances on the lawns. Soon mom and dad will be darting back and forth, heads cocked to the ground, listening for the sound of fat worms below. They'll snatch them up in their beaks and deliver them into nests overhead, where their bald, hungry babies wait. Spring will come.
In the meantime, I get to choose to embrace this waiting. This time of snow and grey skies and a sometimes forced slower pace. A time of soups and muffins filled with melted chocolate chips. A time of old movies and Netflix, of the knitting of scarves and, of course, the reading of books. I get to choose to embrace the time of year when nightstands are piled precariously high with pages waiting to be savored. Soon spring will call me outdoors into more activities, and the pile on the nightstand will whittle down to something more reasonable looking.
So just for now, I'm choosing to say "Thank you, God", for the quietness of winter, with snow and cold and soups bubbling away on back burners, and full knitting needles, and books to curl up with, and such. Thank you it's too cold and nasty, and just too much trouble some days, to venture out and about. Thank you that I'm forced to stay this side of the window and gaze down on how lovely a slower pace can be.
And for those moments when I lose perspective, when the slowing down feels forced and everything in me fights it, when I dwell instead on slushy streets hard to maneuver, high utility bills, the necessity of pulling on jackets and boots and gloves and caps and salt for sidewalks, than you for the promise of spring, with dancing robins, baby leaves and cold-headed daffodils, waiting just around the corner.
