But, Honestly. . . .

The blast of light caught us all by surprise--after a month with three documented days of sunshine. The hands that had held us so tightly in their dark palms finally opened and we found there was a world outside!

Today is grey again, and I resigned myself to the fact that the sun was sleeping again (as Bea says). I slogged through the puddles in the supermarket lot this morning, shopped in the florescent glow, and urged myself to be patient and enjoy myself as the shopper in front of me chatted at great leisure with the check-out woman. It is one of the charms of a small town, after all, and when my turn came the checker greeted me with similar ease and asked how old Bea was now, and then we had the conversation I've had one-thousand times since the birth of my first daughter: how time flies, how you turn your head and your first child is twenty-four, and how you can't keep your eyes off them or you'll miss it, it's so fast.

And the air was cold and wet and heavy with the smells of snow-melt and exhaust and mud.

Tomorrow, my friend Sally tells me, sunshine will return. I looked up with a jolt: really? I had forgotten sunshine comes back faster in March!

So with my children: so much of life, like last night when Bea broke eight eggs all over the freshly mopped floor and Elspeth fell of her chair and then down three stairs, and Merry was full of a sense of injustice--so much seems endless, a long winter of enduring. And then there are these bright, blinding flashes of light--small hands on your face, the down of a child's head under your palm--and you realize that life is a privilege that you are given. Turn your head, as the checker said, and you miss it. And the realization of the gift socks you in the stomach and you think, I will never forget this feeling of gratitude; I will remember to treasure every moment. But then a long grey day comes and the cuffs of your pants are all muddy and wet and you wish you were on the other end of it.

The trick is, I guess, to somehow embrace all that as well. This is the hardest discipline I have to master: embracing and living with all things, whether easy or hard, happy or miserable, anticipated or unexpected. Sometimes I come across someone I think has that gift, and I am always disarmed by their shrug and the smile that spreads across their face, their admission that they only have it down some days and not others. Some days are diamonds, as Kenny Rogers says, some days are stones. I add: some days are winter, some days are spring.

Though honestly, folks, let's be honest: aren't we ready for spring, now? For the season of waiting to end? Who doesn't want the sun-blast? ME! ME! I want it and I want it now! Lent, finish! Easter, come!