LOVE THURSDAY
Cindy Maddera
"Winter weather advisory."
I have had this screen open all day, but I've been consumed with other tasks and unable to put any thought into a Love Thursday post. I always try to write these entries the day before. So, as I sit here typing this, it is really Wednesday. It started snowing here around noon and has progressed from teeny tiny flakes to medium fat flakes. The city was turned completely white in less than an hour. I am currently watching the traffic outside. At 3:30 pm the cars are already bumper to bumper. Everyone is moving at a snail's pace.
There's a large flock of starlings swooping around in all of this weather too. They showed up around here last Friday. By late afternoon, they have migrated to my side of the building. I watch them all settle into one tree. It seems like as soon as they are all settled they are up again, swooping this way and that. They make their own cloud and their black bodies contrast sharply against the white sky. I watch them floating this way and that and it makes me want to dance with them. I see myself swaying and moving my arms around like some hippy child at Coachella. I am reminded of that line in Forest Gump. "Dear Lord, make me a bird so I can fly far far away." They are my reminder to move freely.
It's cold and miserable outside, yet these birds twist and turn and float with ease as if there is no such thing as uncomfortable temperatures. A lesson I have yet to learn. I mentioned the possibility of yoga classes being cancelled to Talaura and she said maybe they'd move class outside and we'd use our mats as sleds. My mat would make a terrible sled, but I did suddenly want to go sledding. Maybe I am learning that lesson if I'm willing to entertain the idea of zipping down a hill on piece of plastic. Those birds are my new meditation for surviving winter.