04.25.21

At the end of this week, we will be done with the “cruel month” of April, and starting the Merry Month of May. The weather has unleashed winter’s remnants across the Rockies this month, leaving snow on my friends and family in Colorado, and thrashing loved ones on the eastern side of our state. Rooftops down here at the lake were covered in snow Friday morning, and cold rain showers pounded the roof overnight. When the low clouds lift off the water, I’m sure we’ll see the snow line at 5,000 foot. And, yet, this photo reflects many of the afternoons we’ve had this month. Most days, even with grapple or snow dusting the lawn, hours of bright spring sunshine have glowed through our French doors in the living room. Don has cleaned the windows twice this month on the lake side of the house, and the wicker furniture is now out on the porch. We haven’t sat out there yet, but it’s waiting for us, and Chatpeau is enjoying her naps on the wool blanket covering the love seat cushions.

Of all the lessons to be gleaned out of Springtime in the Rockies, patience and hope are certainly at the top. “Adopt the pace of nature; her secret is patience.” (Ralph Waldo Emerson.) My stroke recovery is in synch with the pace of nature in springtime. When I put my feet on the floor early this morning–like many mornings, I think for a nanosecond that it will feel like solid ground, and this storm in my life is over. I looked out the window to the blue light and heard the rain, and was reminded that nature’s pace, is nature’s pace, not mine. It helps somehow. And those branches, dripping with rain drops out my window, are ‘fiercely wanting, just a little more of life’– just like I am. Our skies are predicted to be clear in two days, just in time for the full supermoon, a kind farewell from April.

From Fourth Sign of the Zodiac by Mary Oliver

Late yesterday afternoon, in the heat,
all the fragile blue flowers in bloom
in the shrubs in the yard next door had
tumbled from the shrubs and lay
wrinkled and fading in the grass. But
this morning the shrubs were full of
the blue flowers again. There wasn’t
a single one on the grass. How, I
wondered, did they roll back up to
the branches, that fiercely wanting,
as we all do, just a little more of
life?