Best Words Ever

This morning on KERA - our local public radio station - I heard the best words ever:

"A high of 78"

It can only improve from here.

Get out and enjoy the north wind.  Look for geese. Think of better times to come.

Bright, Bright Sunshiny Day...

It’s been a good long time since we merely chatted…about 18 months. So grab your hot toddy, pull up closer to the fire, and listen to me ramble about what’s on my mind.

• The Obama inauguration was an overwhelming joy. I stopped trying to force Young Girl to “get it” once I realized that her blasé attitude is an object lesson in why he was elected. His race is simply not a big deal to her, and not just because of her age. She’s had peers who look like Sasha and Melia all her life. They’re just two girls about her age who have the incredible luck to be living in the White House. Oh, right. They’re African American. Whatever, Mom. During the President Obama’s speech, The Man saw a bald eagle flying out at the ranch. We agreed it was a beautiful, positive omen for the day and the future.

• I have not truly been happy for a long time. But more importantly, I had no idea how blue I’d become. I’ve taken some actions to ameliorate the situation, and I’m pleased to report that the sunshine is breaking through and I’m feeling better than I have in years. Oh, yeah, the menopause thing being over could have a little something to do with that, too.

• As to the above, if you are not happy, and you know what you need to do to feel better, and you can’t do it no matter how much you know you should, please discuss with your health care provider the possibility that something might be up with your body. That’s all I’m saying.

• We’re having a string a stunning, crisp, sunny days. Still, sunny, blue skies with temps in the 40s and 50s are my idea of perfect weather. But I’ll take sunny post-snow days, too. Hint, hint universe.

• My mother continues her miraculous response to her cancer treatment, despite metastasis to her brain. She’s finished radiation for the 6 brain tumors, and is waiting for the go-ahead (neurological stability for a month) to join a clinical trial. She’s breaking all survival expectations. GO MOTHER!


Enough self-important yammering. As soon as I can, I’m headed outdoors.

Winter Dreams

I adore winter.

Those who live elsewhere think it never gets cold in Texas. It certainly doesn’t seem to get as cold as it did during my childhood, when we enjoyed at least one snow day each school year and our parents suffered multiple bouts of black ice. Now our snows are freaky…like the March week this spring when we had six inches one day and nine two days later, with a 60 degree day in between that cleared the yard completely.

The climate has definitely changed in my lifetime.

But winter still arrives acutely in these parts. As I always remind some shivering transplant, our only defenses against the frigid Canadian cold fronts are barbed wire fences.

Everyone has a story. My friends C & L “fondly” remember a west Texas high school football game where balloons were released during a balmy halftime show, floated gently northward on a light southern breeze, and blustered back during fourth quarter on a fierce north wind that dropped the temperature 40 degrees.

My special memory? The year before I married, our town endured ten days with high temperatures below ten degrees. The Man had renovated a turn-of-the-century farmhouse. Our Christmas tree stood against the north wall, and the water froze in the stand. We went out twice a day with an axe to chop holes in the tanks so the cattle could get to water; the ice was four inches thick at the edges. The night skies were crystalline. I’m not sure any subsequent Christmas has ever measured up in terms of natural magic.

This year we’ve been weather waiting. Waiting for rain. And waiting for winter. And I’ve been waiting: for understanding, enlightenment, calm, clarity, direction.

Our first  “norther” blew through this week. While the slight promise of snow flurries did not prove true, the wind chill did drop into the teens and the koi pond was encased in a thin film of ice. I was caught off guard by it. I’d left the house in a t-shirt and yoga pants, but somehow never made it to the Y, instead whiling the day away with coffee and a book at Starbucks. I stepped outside at 2 p.m. into a different world: gray, gusty, and 35 degrees toward winter.

I was early to pick up Small Child that afternoon. First in line, I turned off the engine and listened to the roar and whistle. And as I watched the wind, as I could almost see its linearity – north to south – in the motion of tree limbs, I felt my need for winter stir deep inside me, particularly sharp as my fiftieth birthday approaches.

I want to stand, vulnerable and exposed, facing the north.

I want the wind, harsh and unforgiving, to rip the unnecessary, the obsolete, the dead weight from my soul and my life just as it tears the last remaining leaves from the trees.

I want to know my basic architecture, my trunk and my branches, from the roots to the tiniest twigs, with nothing to interfere.

I want, when the wind dies down, to gleam under the crystal stars of the winter sky.

I want the snow to come.

I want to rest under its blanket, to store up energy.

I want to dream of what is to come, of the next chapter, of the new growth that lies ahead.

I want the peace of  winter solstice.

May it come to me and to you, my friends.

Snow Joy!

Substantive words will have to wait while I play in the Texas snow.

The yard is gorgeous, as you can see....


Large Dog is hard at work on his St. Bernard imitation...


Small child has enjoyed a snow day...


All are romping, and there's no place to lounge!