Winter Storm Warnings

Winter arrived yesterday – not unusual to receive the first real snowfall of the year in mid-November – but what was unusual was that we got 6 inches of the white stuff all at once – instant Christmas Card! Luckily we took advantage of the storm warning to prepare: a stop at Costco for enough food to last until Spring; a stop at the liquor store in case we are actually all stuck inside together for any extended period of time; time spent Friday night getting the backyard rink ready; and a little bit of forethought yesterday to hang the garland and lights on the front of the house.  Nothing like a warning from Mother Nature to get you moving.

So the outside looks like Christmas – the inside? Not so much.  The last of the Fall and Halloween decorations have just been put away, and the chaos that is our slowly-being-renovated-house ensures Better Homes and Gardens will not be stopping by any time soon to do that photo-shoot.  The additional hour this week thanks to the time change was barely felt, and we have a list of to-do’s a mile long that we want to tackle, but time seems to escape us – work, school, the boy’s hockey schedule: it blurs together and before you know it another month has passed and you find yourself pretty much where you were 6 or 8 weeks earlier. Only older.

Life happens.  And it doesn’t wait until you’re ready. Ask the East Coast.  Or better yet, just look outside. We know winter will come – it’s no surprise given where we live – this isn’t Texas – it’s always a matter of when.  This year it was yesterday and we were mostly ready, maybe not with all the little details like draining the gas and putting the lawn mower away for the winter; or that one final clean of the shed and putting away the last of the planters and pots which are now buried by the gazebo deck. But we did enough while we had the time to be able to sit down today and feel content with where we are.

There’s change on the horizon – change in all sorts of places. I’m giving you fair warning now that it’s there, waiting for me, waiting for me to accept that it will come and when it does things will have to adjust around here to suit.  And that’s okay.  I’m making my peace with that.  Looking forward to it actually, needing it in many ways.  You’ll hear more about that in the weeks and months to come – but suffice it to say one of the reasons I haven’t been ‘here’ much the past few months is also one of the forces pushing things forward.

We resist change pretty well – I think we’re taught that that skill at a young age – to push back and hold on to things the way they are currently instead of feeling the natural ebb and flow of time and accepting the current of the stream as it carries us along.  Not sure if that’s our ego thinking it’s in charge and able to finally have control by making time stand still, or if it’s the common human tie that binds us all – facing the reality that we too are mortal and will someday pass.  Some people really struggle with that idea, that they won’t be around forever – they dismiss it entirely and live with a fear constantly a palpable part of their days, a fear that drives them.  A fear that consumes them quietly inside, gnawing and eating at them, cloaked in illness or mental health issues, or maybe in that classic catch-all ‘stress’ – its all the same; its one emotion pushing the buttons and until it’s met and looked at clearly with no assumptions and no illusions, it will continue to run the show.

But if it’s uncovered and examined for what it really is, that emotion is a pretty harmless thing – it’s a survival mechanism of sorts alerting us to immediate or certain dangers – helpful tools when we lived off the land like wild animals – not always terrible useful now that we’ve seemingly mastered our environment – but in that definition of “alerting us to immediate or certain danger” we can find the seeds of why so many of us fail to act or refuse to accept the inevitable – the danger isn’t immediate enough to force us to change.  It’s off in the distance, like retirement or old age – ideas to a child that seem fuzzy and cloudy, not in any need of clarity or processing because they are so far away in time from the here and now.  But time is sneaky that way.  These eyes still see the world with the memory of that child, and that teen, and it is easy to pretend we aren’t who we are becoming.  But the signs are there – more of them everyday – if we’re willing to slow down and pay attention.

It’s November, it’s snowed and it’s giving me a chance to sit here and reflect while looking forward.  A reminder today that we all have time enough to do what needs to be done now, to be able to sit down later and feel content with where we are.  Now help me shovel the driveway…

Turn, Turn, Turn

Hey.  How have you been?  I know, I know, it’s been too long, we’ve managed to let life get in the way again and let the important things slide.  We keep doing that, taking the other for granted when things become hurried and frantic and you can’t tell up from down or night from day – hell, who are we kidding, it can happen even if it’s a perfectly quiet Sunday morning on the deck listening to the birds and enjoying that first cup of coffee watching the sun wake up the sky.  We’re lazy and we know it.  The things that keep us grounded the most are the ones we allow to shift out of focus on a regular basis until such time as we stop long enough to notice what’s missing.

It’s still warm, too warm for us up here, and I know you have it worse, but we were never meant to live with the AC running 24/7 – that’s not healthy and I don’t know how you do it.  I need my window open at night to sleep in that deep, restful sleep that has been eluding me for far too long now, and a closed up stale house just isn’t cutting it.

Yes, I know we’ve only got a few more months of this and then it’s back to the dark chill, and you know I’m perfectly fine with that.  I’ve never once said I didn’t like that.  Yes I know I complain about it once it’s here and caught us in it’s icy grasp, but deep down I still love it, and would dearly miss it if this wasn’t where we called home.

There’s comfort in those changes, a rhythm, a cadence that marks time perfectly, measuring the months while we pretend not to notice, eyes diverted while the grass grows and darkens, slows and browns, cools then stops.  It’s an assurance that things are fine the way they are, without your intervention, that nature has it all figured out and if you’d only quit trying to fool yourself, you’d see you need only to fall into step and allow it to be just the way it is.

But we’ve never really been good at that have we?

We’re fortunate to live in a time where (for most of us) opportunity and choice are almost endless, we’re god-like in every respect and ancient royalty by any measure of historical context, but we’re caught in a shift of ideology that has us anxious and fearful of losing everything we have.  Sounds like the same issues historical royalty faced too, but ours is ingrained into our being now even the poorest among us expect things to be a certain way, the threshold higher than at any time before, the dream just beyond our grasp. 

Few though recognize the reality, which is not new, only magnified by the unlimited amount of information we have at our disposal through which to shift to find it.  It was easier to remain ignorant when information was more tightly controlled by the ruling classes of Church and State, easier too to be led and controlled, and don’t think that lesson has been lost on those who seek to gain at the expense of others.  Dumb it down and keep them numb and the world is your oyster.

We have only ourselves to blame – seeking refuge from our daily stresses in mindless fluff and pointless pastimes, allowing others to carry the load and do the heavy lifting, preferring to sit and rest a spell, thinking we’ll catch up and help out when we’re ready.  But if we can’t even make time for the ones closest to us, the ones who mean the most, what makes us think we’ll make any time for issues that might not concern us presently but will surely impact us later?  We’ve been conditioned to live in the here and now, and that’s exactly where we’ll be damned.

But how do you balance the here and now acceptance of allowing things to be the way they are naturally with attempting to provide guidance and leadership for a future course through unknown waters?  The two seem directly opposed. Perhaps within each is the solution to the other – a measured allowance of latitude within the wheel to wander across the waves while we occasionally scan the horizon for perils and obstacles?  Except that it was far easier to spot the hazards when you were alone at sea as opposed to traversing the woodlands at high speed where both the forest and trees look identical.

Perhaps that’s where the change of season comes in, clearing the forest of the leafy cover come fall, allowing more light to filter through until we’re uncovered and bare, able to see great distances now in the cooler air, poised to take advantage of the clarity.  And with calculated decisions made, we continue on back into spring, where the green returns and multiplies soon to provide us with much needed shade to hide us from the midsummer’s sun.  We slow our pace somewhat in the heat but soldier on, the rich bounty of the coming harvest steering us forward, waiting to replenish our bodies and souls.

To everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose…

Words to ponder this morning before that dark, oppressive heat settles in for another day.  And maybe our routine of finding and losing each other again is just the way it is meant to be. 

Maybe, but I’d prefer to keep the losing part to a minimum.