LOVE THURSDAY

This is my third attempt to write something for Love Thursday. Every attempt just looked like the same words I've been typing for every entry since the beginning of the year. All of that looks something like this: I need Spring now, Spring is almost here, No more snow. You get the idea. I seem to have a short term memory where this season is concerned and my impatience is showing. Saturday afternoon, when I'd returned from eye exams and grocery shopping, the weather was so beautiful that I took my yoga mat outside to the backyard. The ground was lumpy under my mat and the occasional breeze was a challenge to my balance, but the sun was warm on my face. As I stood in vriksasana, I made eye contact with a robin perched on my fence, his head nodding his approval. Then I took my practice off my mat and into the garden, turning the soil and pulling out the dead remains of last season's herbs. I even threw some seeds into the freshly turned soil. By the time I headed back inside I was pleasantly sun kissed, sweaty, and covered in dirt. Michael returned home from a meeting and talked me into riding the scooters to the grocery store for cotton candy milk. I didn't need too much convincing. It was a short but blissful time out buzzing around on our scooters. It was the best Spring tease day we've had yet. The next morning we woke up to a fresh layer of snow on the ground.

My first instinct is to write about the sinking feeling in my chest at the sight of the snow, to rave on and on about the fickleness of the seasons, and thus repeating myself by writing yet another entry about willing Spring. But then it dawns on me that I am missing the big picture. I am actually missing more than the big picture. My Saturday had been filled with things that I love: sunshine, yoga, gardening, scooter rides, Michael. I would say cotton candy milk too, but the grocery was sold out. We settled for root beer milk which is delicious in it's own right. It's just not possible for every day to be that full of the things you love. I wouldn't say that they are rare moments, but our day to day is usually filled with the tasks of being grownups. Jobs and chores and kids. These are the things that take up most of our time and not necessarily in a bad way. Some of us enjoy our jobs and I actually like cleaning the house (I find it soothing). It's just that those things leave little time for the other things that we enjoy doing. There's just not enough time, sunshine or snow, for every single thing.

That's what Saturday was about. It was my day for all the other things. Sure the beautiful weather helped, but I wouldn't have given myself the time for digging in the dirt during the week. I wouldn't have said yes to a scooter ride when I knew I still had chores to be done before bedtime. I wouldn't have allowed myself a whole glass of root beer milk. The lesson I need to always remember is that the transition between Winter and Spring is just like every day life but on a grander scale. Soak up the sun for the flip days of snow, the same way we should relish in the days we are able to fill with the things we love.

Happy Love Thursday!