Many of the members of the cast of characters in my life are in different places now.  There have been a lot of changes in a year.  For the most part, it’s been a natural evolution.  Children grow up and move away and come and go in a different pattern than they did when they were  – well – not adults.  The husband and I don’t live together anymore but that is not today’s story.  Today’s story is about SNOW DAYS!
Yup!  We have one.  Yee HAW!
Sense memory is a funny thing.  There are no children at home to cover gently and whisper to quietly “Go back to sleep honey.  There’s no school today.”  The sure thing was that they would wake up wide-eyed and alert, “What!  Really!  Cool!  What’s for breakfast?”  Because no matter how bare the cupboard I managed a special breakfast on snow days.  My hands are itching right now to make gingerbread from scratch and fill this new home with that scent of excitement and giggles.  And after that I would make a big pot of split pea soup and a pan of cornbread that would serve as lunch and dinner and anything in between the sledding and playing outside because it is one of those days when the weather is perfect winter.  Deep snow.  No biting wind.  Bundle them up at daylight and send them out to play.  This is perfect.  But there are no warm bodies under covers and I doubt that my adult children would appreciate an early morning phone call to tell them to go back to sleep.  I imagine their response to be “Mooooom!  I have to go to work anyway.  This sucks.”  So I will wait to make the phone call until a little later and tell them to drive safely and leave early and give themselves plenty of time to get where they are going. 
The characters who have remained more or less constant are the dogs and they romped happily this morning after I shoved the back door through the snow drift.  Even the boy dog dachshund jumped and cavorted.  The wind wasn’t blowing for a change and the still air made him happy bounding through the drifts.  The Aussie girl dog loves this stuff.  She wants to stay outside for hours and roll and chase her ball except for one small problem – her ball gets cold and uncomfortable to pick up and return.  Still, she is valiant in her efforts.
So, in this changed life of mine, the dogs are curled up and the snow falls outside and life is full of giggles and hot coffee.
I just may make that soup anyway.  I can always put it in the freezer.
And so it goes.

I have a confession to make…
I am one of those people who like winter.  Yup, there it is.  In a state whose citizens are annually surprised that white stuff falls from the sky and sticks to the ground, I love the change of seasons.  I don’t do any of the winter stuff that winter afficionados revel in.  Don’t ski.  Don’t skate.  Don’t like hockey or basketball.I used to like sledding but having reached – or almost reached – that “certain age” the percussion of bouncing down the hill leaves my back in pieces for a week, so I don’t do that anymore either.  But all of that notwithstanding, I like the change of season, the quiet sleeping earth, blanketed in the blustery, frozen cold of northeast Ohio.  Our mistress, Lake Erie, brings us surprises on an almost daily basis and listening to the weather people is more to be able to make fun of rather than count on the accuracy of their forecasts.  They rarely get it right, especially because what is happening in one town is frequently NOT happening five miles away.  So, I bask in today, even as my fingers are just beginning to thaw from filling the car with gas.  My toes are still frozen and I appreciate the value of a good pair of boots – which I don’t own, by the way.  The world blusters away outside my window and as soon as the clock strikes the correct hour I am off to an antique store to look at some dishes and contemplate what furniture I want to buy and maybe pick up a new piece of glass for the windowsill.  Winter is a good time for color and light coming int he window on the rare days of sunshine.  And it’s a good time for reflection and thinking and discovery.  Soon enough it will be time to look for seeds and buy top soil and grow green things.  For now, this time, this searching and reflection are a necessary part of the seasonal landscape and I embrace it all with joy.

And so it goes

I can’t speak for anyone else, but in my own life New Year’s Resolutions are generally futile and just another way to disappoint myself.  In fact, while am sure a few people manage to make and keep them, I have never been able to.  I’m not very good at following reasonless mandates and that’s what those silly resolutions have always felt like to me.  However….

I have no problem at all with resolve. Resolve is active and somehow, in my little head, speaks to gifts rather than punishment. It’s like the difference between giving something up for Lent and being altruistic for Lent.  One is denial and one is a gift.  Resolve is a gift from me to me. 

As the beginning of anything seems like a good time for resolve, why not the first of the year.  (And don’t get me started on the beginning of the decade thing…it’s like the millennium which didn’t start when social conventions says it did but whatever and who cares?)

So, I hereby resolve…

• to read more
• to write about what I read
• to reflect and to write about those reflections
• A lifepath has been cleared; the snow shoveled away; the boulders moved to the side. I resolve to walk that path with eyes wide open, to see, to live, to be.

And so it begins.