We’re right on the cusp of change.
Days too warm and humid to think straight are followed by days of absolutely gorgeous weather. Then we’ll have a couple of ugly days (just to remind us that Iowa is not actually paradise and we have to wait for that) followed by more beautiful days. Before too long, summer really will give way to autumn. Change is in the air.
I’m trying really hard not to get lost in the ugly-hot days and feel as if it will never turn cooler. That’s my go-to in about mid-March. Even though the temperatures are trying to warm up, my psyche is so programmed after three months of cold ugly stuff to believe that is what I will always wake up to, the I forget what it’s like to walk around in bare feet and to have soft butter on the table.
You know, we once had a dryer that was annoyingly broken. We could make the thing work with pushing and prodding, twisting and turning. Then one day Dad fixed it. He laughingly told Mom that she appreciated it that much more because she’d had six months of living with it being bad. The thing was. He wasn’t wrong. But it took a while to remember that the dryer worked normally and we didn’t have to fuss and fume. We weren’t fully prepared for that change.
Or like when I finally cut my hair off. For a couple of months, I fight with those stinking curls after a shower. It takes forever for me to finally get the rats combed out of my hair. Sure, I could use a ton of product, but that’s not how I roll. But then, the hairs are all cut shorter and I pull a comb through with ease. The first couple of showers after the haircut are funny because I prepare myself, like always, to suffer through the pain of tugging on the rat’s nests, but they aren’t there any longer.
Changes come … some so fast we don’t know how to manage them, others take their sweet time and we barely notice that anything new has occurred.
I do my best to appreciate, even anticipate, change, knowing that it will stir me into new waters – whether it’s a hair cut that gives me back about ten minutes a day, a dryer that works, a broken leg that has healed, or a season that finally makes itself known.
I’m ready for summer to release its grip on us, that’s for sure, but with the end of summer, we look forward to fall, dread the horrors of winter cold, enjoy the new growth of spring and then we’re back to summer. Maybe I should just slow down and enjoy whatever it is that comes at me, knowing that change is always around the corner. I might as well accept it and enjoy what I have. It’s all that I have.
