It's hard to see in the photo, but I couldn't resist taking a picture: first snow of the season, and someone on campus had made a snowman. It is only a temporary one, as the weather is warming and already tilting him to the side. (In fact, the second I snapped the photo his head rolled off!). But still. It's the first snow and it's a snowman. 

I have always loved snowmen. I have quite a collection in my home--some that stay with us all year round and not just at Christmas. I love Calvin's snowmen. I just get such a kick out of how he uses them to communicate what he really thinks, creating commentary on life as he sees it. 

Once I saw a watercolor of a snowman in a mason jar with a caption: There is no snowman resurrection--Enjoy now. I refused to buy it even though I loved it because whoever had painted it had misspelled "resurrection," and I knew that it would just bother me. But my artist friend knew how much I wanted it, so she made me one. 

So, I wonder if I like snowmen for just that: they are temporary and therefore precious. But, with that thought I realize that everything--everyone--is just that, too: temporary. We are all only here for a short time. People pass through our lives and on, to another place, which means, in some cases, that we will never meet again in this life. With that thought, I realize that I should treat everyone I meet as temporary and precious, as gifts in the moment. It's a kind of grace, I think, that snowmen remind me of. Something I need to remember more often when a driver irritates me or a person in the store is rude. I need to imagine them all as snowmen. Precious.