calling for an end to winter

Our weather has seemed extreme lately.
First, it snowed. Now, it isn't odd or extreme to have snow in winter. Normal, in fact. But it has snowed more this year than it has for a few years--and it has stayed. That is a little unusual. Not in Alaska where I grew up and could count on snow staying from October through March. But here? My experience here is that it snows, but the snow comes and goes.
Then it got cold. REALLY cold. Breaking-all-kinds-of-records cold. Coats-and-hats-can't-keep-you-warm cold. Heat-up-the-rice-bags-multiple-times-a-day cold.  And the cold stayed.
We visited some of our kids/grandchildren in Houston over the first weekend of January. When our flight was landing here on our return, I looked out the window. It was hard to tell where the ground was. Snow and frost made the landscape one level. Like Siberia. Maybe Antarctica.
Then, last week, it started to warm up. (How terrible when freezing seems like a heat wave!. And then we had ice. Such slippery ground everywhere that movement was just a slide, not a step. People falling. Cars sliding.
Sunday, we drove to my father-in-law's birthday in a blizzard. It seemed a little spring-like at our house (if you ignored the deep piles of snow and huge icicles throughout the neighborhood), but at the point of the mountain, the wind was blowing so hard that cars were having trouble. Then the snow started--heavy, wet, snow, blowing sideways. And fog. I had white knuckles the whole way. We only visited for a couple of hours (which equaled about four inches of snow) and then made our way home again. Cars were backwards in the road and crunched into the barriers in places.
And today, it is snowing again. A part of me recognizes the beauty. See?

But a part of me is really ready for winter to be over. I tell myself that January is winter. I should expect it. And I do. But in two days, January is over. And I expect a change. Hear that, Mother Nature?

choices and paths

I couldn't help it; I had to snap the photo. Holding an ice cream cone in one hand but drinking a milkshake instead! She's my grand-daughter, so I think she's cute anyway, but when she insisted on her mom's milkshake even though she had an ice cream cone still unfinished, I had to laugh and snap a photo.

And now, looking at the photo, I wonder. Is it okay to put aside one thing for another? Do I always need to finish the one thing if another (maybe better) option comes along? Is it okay to detour a little--or do I need to stay goal oriented ALL the time, finishing one task before taking on another? Sticking with my first option when another one presents itself?

The choice with ice cream is easy. Sometimes, in life, it isn't so easy.

playing with others

A few weeks ago I was in Arizona visiting grandchildren (and children). We had a weekend full of birthday parties, Halloween parties, baptisms, you name it. We managed to squeeze in watching one of our grandsons play soccer. He is not-quite-four. I didn't know that there were soccer teams for 3-year-olds!

There were only three players on the field at any time--and the field was about half the size of a normal one. The job was to get the ball in the goal--there were no penalties or anything like that. There was also no sense of teamwork. Our grandson (in the gray shirt above) was aggressive. He would just go in there and start kicking the ball. About half the time he kicked it into the opposing team's net--apparently nothing about each team having a goal was in his frame of reference.

One of the funniest things about the whole thing was how often the kids would be kicking the ball and lose ir or someone would kick it away or out of bounds, and the little players (both boys and girls) would suddenly stop, stamp a foot (or both of them), fold their arms, and start crying. They did not like their play interrupted, their progress thwarted. Parents and/or coaches would have to help soothe--and sometimes remove a player from the field. It was funny. I kept thinking, "how little they are! how much like babies they really still are."

And then I thought that I might not actually stomp my foot, fold my arms and start crying--but I do it inside and more subtly when I get bugged at people who "steal MY ball." We aren't, after all, so different, except that we've learned to respond less like a three-year-old. We still want our way, we want all the prizes and all the praise. We want to make our goals without any interference. Seeing those budding soccer players put my life into a different lens. I hope I'm nicer to drivers on the way home today.

Little things

I was in Maine this past weekend. One afternoon after the workshop ended, I drove around to see sights. It was, after all, my first time in Maine. I loved the rocky coastline and the working fishing boats in the harbors. I loved the trees and the granite outcroppings. I loved the white wooden houses with their flat fronts against the narrow streets, so proud and forthright. On my map, I noticed that there was a lighthouse nearby, so how I could I resist? I headed over and walked the trail that led to these stairs. I have to admit, even from this perspective, the lighthouse looked small. I mean, I have read about lighthouses (they are a particular interest of mine) and seen some in Florida and Oregon, and they'd all been big. This one didn't seem so big.

 When I got up to it, I realized that my original perception had been accurate. It wasn't big. I wouldn't want to live in it, the way some people lived in lighthouses. I found out later that the keeper's house was built two years after the lighthouse, so apparently there was no need for it to serve two purposes. It did the job. It had all the requisite parts of a lighthouse--and it's been there for 150 years (built in 1852!), so it is obviously useful. It was tidy and sturdy. Small, yes, but just what it needed to be. Kind of cute, actually.

Today I read a picture book called Little Bird (Germano Zullo). It's about the little things in life that matter. In the book--which I HIGHLY recommend--the author says this: "Most of the time we don't notice these things. Because little things are not made to be noticed. They are there to be discovered."  I reflected (not for the first time) that big things can be impressive just because of size, but little things (people, events, emotions) matter, too. Little things others do matter to my life: the smile of a stranger, a text message from a friend. The small things that make me smile (my 3-year-old grandson had his mom text me a picture of a piece of an apple he'd shaped with his teeth into a boat) and the small moments that matter (a former student just stopped by my open door to thank me for helping solve a problem last week) are the things that help to make the foundation of a life. If we discover them. They are, after all, not made to be noticed. I have to look for them. Little things. Discover. Good reminder.

living more importantly

I am going to show off some of my grandchildren today with two photos I received recently. The one at the tops shows Millie: she'd gotten into the bowl of pears her mom had left on the table and eaten parts of five different ones. I love her look that says "Aren't I wonderful?" With the one at the bottom, my son-in-law attached this caption: "which of these doesn't belong?" (since one of the "princesses" is a boy). Obviously, Gabe didn't think anything except that he'd been having fun with his cousins.

I guess I'm putting these photos on my blog today partly because they both made me smile. They are, after all, my darling grandchildren who always can bring a smile to my heart and face. And partly, they also both made me think about how kids don't think the way I do. I would think I should finish one pear before I begin another--or, worse, that I should only allow myself one pear, even though they taste SO GOOD that I'd like another. I might forget just having fun with my cousins and think that I don't want to appear silly. In my grown-up thinking, I worry if something is appropriate or healthy or wise or silly or a waste of time or whatever. And there are good reasons that as we grow we learn to think like that. It's important to think mature, wise thoughts. But I wonder if too often I forget the joy that comes from not worrying, just for a minute, about grown-up things. The pleasure of eating a cookie before the salad (or, heaven forbid, in place of the salad). The joy of sitting with my husband in the backyard swing and simply watching the sunset when there is a stack of papers to be graded inside the house and floors to be vacuumed. The pleasures that come just from enjoying the moment and not worrying about the next one. Thankfully, I have these delightful reminders that there are, sometimes, more important ways of living.

new things

When we were at the grocery story last week, we saw this fruit.

It's called a Jackfruit. It is the largest fruit that grows on trees. This one was about 20 pounds, but they can get as big as 80 pounds. I want to see the tree that can bear that kind of fruit! Jackfruit is common in Southeast Asia, but I had never seen one before going to the store. I guess the inside is full of pods that cover seeds that look like nuts--and the meat is VERY sticky. One source said that even the knife you use to cut open the fruit should be oiled because the fruit is so sticky. If it's cooked, I learned, the meat resembles chicken in texture (doesn't everything?) and can be a part of a vegetarian diet in that way.

Anyway, the jackfruit got me thinking about all the things that exist in this world that I don't know anything about. I don't even know they exist! Our lives--or I guess I should say, my life--are really sheltered in some regards. We have all this access to information (all I had to do was google the word on my phone, and I had more info than I wanted), but we still can't comprehend all that is out there, even just in our surroundings (not counting space or the depths of the sea). It's cool to think there will always be more to learn, but kind of daunting, too. So much to learn, so little time to learn it.

perception

There's a new show on TV by this name. The details of each episode change, but the general idea of perception (as presented on the show) is unique. What do we think we see? Is it really what others see? Can we trust the obvious? Or is there more?

I have some experiences with seeing something and thinking that it is something else in that first moment of viewing. I've often found that first impressions are often wrong. And yet, seeing is so much more. Smithsonian recently had an issue with three pieces about seeing and invisibility. In one study, researchers found that if observers were asked to count the number of times a basketball was passed among players, they totally missed the gorilla (fake) that walked through the scene partway through the study. Another short piece explains the art work of Liu Bolin, a Chinese artist who has an assistant paint him so that he blends almost perfectly into his surrounding. I've seen some of his art before. It's a very compelling statement about invisibility, about perception, about seeing.

This weekend we went up to Swiss Days in Heber. In one of the booths, an artist sold photos of words--but the letters were bits of things in our environment--the curve of a railing, the notch in a tree. The artist saw in these elements, letters. And from these he created words that had meaning. It fascinated me because it showed me a different way to see.

We had parked in a field outside of town and ridden a shuttle into the fair. As we got into the car to come home, I noticed this tree.

It looks like the tree has dark leaves, but all of them are birds. When we shut our doors, they all flew up and around, like a big wind swirling leaves through the field. Then they settled back into the tree, again looking like black leaves.

In The Little Prince, we read that it is only with the heart that we can see clearly. In another book, Antoine de Saint Exupery says this: A rock pile ceases to be a rock pile the moment a single man contemplates it, bearing within him the image of a cathedral. 

How often do I see without seeing?