February 21, 2024
The snow arrived precisely as
predicted last week. We received about two and a half inches of the white
stuff, and except for a bit of it melting on the roads thanks to the daytime sunshine,
when I went to bed last night the white still covered most everything.
But before turning in, I
scanned the forecast for the next seven days. Beginning today, we are supposed
to hit the 40s every day except Saturday. Tuesday of next week, our predicted high
temperature is pegged at 50. And while there is some rain that is supposed to
be falling off and on in the interim, as it stands right now, they’re not
calling for any snow at all.
I’ll take it.
By nine a.m. this morning,
that “snow covered everything” had been replaced by “patches of snow remaining”,
and I had real hope that by the end of today, the only place snow would remain
would be in the shadowed corners near buildings and curbs. The drip, drip, drip
of water leaving the down spout and hitting a rock provided my morning’s
rhythm.
It really has been a relatively
easy winter in southern Ontario this year, all things considered. Some might
even say that we have no right to complain in this area of the country, and
really—since I do watch the news every night and see what some of y’all have
been dealing with this season—there’s truth in that opinion. The lack of
ferocity this year, while welcome, certainly hasn’t changed my mind about the
nature of winter in general.
I’m sorry, but I still don’t
care for it.
Whatever the weather, I do
truly appreciate it when I look out my window and can see sunshine. David is
the one in this house who truly enjoys the out-of-doors. No, he’s not a
sportsman. The habit formed during a career spent working outside, year-round.
Before he began to endure his own leg pain, he would kind of nag at me to get
outside and enjoy the day. And I would, sometimes, but never without a blanket to
place around my legs. And I certainly wouldn’t sit out for as long as he would do.
If I leave the house during
the wintertime, I always wear a thermal layer over my legs; and in the car I
have a large towel that I use as a lap blanket. Drafts of any kind on my legs
are likely to produce a great deal of pain.
Getting outside is likely
something that I should do more of, going forward. I do need to keep moving,
and I know how good fresh air and sunshine are for the body and soul. This is
just a habit I need to form—and one that truly will have more pluses to it than
minuses. Now to move that idea from head knowledge to heart knowledge, and then
act on it!
This past week I took a few
moments to think about my father, on the 109th anniversary of his
birth. He died far too young, before any of his children came to legal age. He
never got to walk either of his girls down the aisle, and never had the
opportunity to enjoy being a grandfather. He and my mother were together just shy
of twenty years, and that’s just a damn shame.
My mother once told me that she
and my dad had lived their lives as if they had all the time in the world, when
really, they had barely any. And I know that while as a widow she did have many
moments of happiness, of smiles and laughter over the years, she never got over
losing him. She never married again, and, in fact, never even dated.
I asked her only once about
that, shortly after I, myself had married—and just a couple of years before she
died at the too-young age of 57. She told me that she’d been in charge of her
own life by then long enough that she didn’t have any desire to turn it over to
another man to run.
This would have been in the
early 1970s, and as you can see, attitudes were much different then, than they
are today. But I do recall even that at that time, if I had been physically capable
of raising either of my eyebrows, I would have.
Life goes on, one day after
another. We change over the days and weeks and months, but don’t often
recognize the minutia of the process. So while Mother Nature tries to decide
what comes next for us here, I will try to remain grateful for the moment I’m
in—even if sometimes those moments are difficult.
Love,
Morgan
https://www.bookstrand.com/morgan-ashbury
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