November 4, 2020

It’s November, just. I think something was going on yesterday in the country to the south of us. There appeared to be a lot of tension and excitement, and regular television programming, what there is of it these days, was pre-empted.

As far as I can see, whatever it was is still happening. I’m hearing the words tenterhooks, premature, and patience.

But I’m not going to talk about that, because there’s just no way I can do that and have it come out well for me. So instead, I think I’ll talk for a moment about the strange weather we’re having this week.

Just this past weekend, we got snow. Wet snow came down, at times looking like a blizzard, and it was icky! I snuck a peek around my monitor to look out my window and at one point there were so many white flakes in the air I couldn’t see across the street. In the end, there was not much of an accumulation, just a coating on grass and cars, but it was cold enough for it to stay overnight. I am not a fan of snow, and even less of a fan of snow and/or ice on the outdoor walking surfaces.

I now have to try to recall where I put my ice claw, a device that fits on the end of my cane. Without the claw that covers the rubber tip of my cane with a small, metal five-pronged pick, I would not be able to use said cane as a walking device on snow or ice.

So, Sunday, snow. Today? According to the weather network dot com, it’s going to hit fifty-seven degrees today. And for the next few days our daytime temperatures are slated to be in the mid-sixties.

Let me say that again. In the mid-sixties in November in Canada. You remember, I trust, that in our national anthem, we refer to ourselves as “the true north, strong and free”. We don’t call ourselves the frozen north, because, well, we all of us up here just assume you all down there and the rest of the world knows that about us.

I have an American friend who once said that Canada was the country that used ice as a construction material, and he wasn’t far off. We’re slated to have these warmer temperatures for the rest of this week and into the next. And it’s not even supposed to hit the freezing mark overnight.

I would like to take this opportunity to remind Mother Nature that the relative and pertinent phrase is “a frosty day in July” and not “a summer day in November”.

Tenterhooks, premature, and patience.

The greatest of these three words is patience, but I’ll add one more to it. Faith. It’s a difficult set of qualities to cultivate in this life, having patience and faith, especially in these modern techno-savvy times. Life these days moves at the speed of sound, it seems, and so we like to have things when we want things and for some of us the idea of waiting is hard. Very, very hard. Keeping the faith is the same, difficult to do because we are so used to having it—whatever it is—now and may think that we don’t need faith.

Children are famous for their lack of patience, but the lack sadly isn’t relegated only to the young. The good thing about having cultivated patience as a matter of course would be that when the time comes and you really need a storehouse of it, you have it. You’re able to take a deep breath, and relax, and wait. You have patience and faith to spare, and that’s amazing.

If you’re not the sort of person who’s known for their patience (and that includes me, by the way, though I do have faith), you can learn to fake it. Those who know me best chuckle at the concept that I’m a patient person. They say my motto is “grant me patience, Lord, but hurry.”

And they’re right, absolutely, though I would point that even they know if I ask for something, who it is I ask it of.

So, let’s all do this faking thing together, shall we? Let’s take a deep breath, and then another. And we’ll tell ourselves that everything is fine and will turn out exactly the way it’s meant to be.

 

Love,

Morgan

http://www.morganashbury.com

http://www.bookstrand.com/morgan-ashbury