Isn’t It

It’s not always easy to admit the truth especially when you realize you’ve been wrong.

I wasn’t certain what awoke me at 6 a.m. this morning until I looked out the window and realized it was ice pelting the window.

Rubbing my eyes, I thought, I must be dreaming. it’s April, a time when traditionally I’d pack the dreary down coat and pull out last year’s Eileen Fisher spring jackets hoping they had survived the winter.

April was the time when the first tinges of yellow seemed to appear miraculously on the dormant harbingers of spring, the forsythia that lined the antique fence surrounding our little White House.

April promised lilacs soon; ice cream on the boardwalk and maybe, just maybe, but well, enough of that, it was still snowing despite the date on my calendar.

My initial reaction was “I can’t deal with anymore of this,” and then suddenly, I knew it was time to stop looking out of the window and into my own reservoir of survival.

Hallmark Cards may have called today A Red Letter Day. orators may have termed it differently. Certainly, Lucretius expressed a viewpoint in his poetry, and me, I suppose, I’d just say it was a turning point.

Today became the day I stopped looking out the window, and realized my equilibrium relied on looking inside myself, my soul perhaps.

Later in the morning while I savored the second cup of black coffee needed to shut out the ongoing storm, I took a rare nostalgic trip back in time. I opened up the photos on my Ipad of the home I had relinquished before relocating to the land of cold.

As I walked back in memory through each of the rooms so beautifully arranged by the realtor, I remembered the loneliness that had invaded a once happy home after all those I cherished had departed. I reluctantly admitted the truth of how I managed to survive. I finally comprehended it was only by not looking outside the shutter framed windows but inside my memory bank and reservoir of remembered love that had sustained my well being during those long isolated eight years.

After I moved, I seemed to forget the lessons I had reluctantly learned. I began to look outside the window for fulfillment forgetting I could only accomplish that myself. Today I admitted I could do that again.

I finished the coffee, turned on my playlist of musical memories and began to mix the batter for some cookies. Not one of my easier recipes, but a complicated one that would take more time and enhance my snowbound day.

Instinctively, I realized who I would bring the cookies to; an acquaintance whose wit, intelligence and emotional stability has brightened a dreary winter. His name is unimportant, but occasionally, we share dinner in the Pub. Despite the limitations on his once athletic body caused by a debilitating disease, he has never stopped looking inside the window and being a courageous example to others.

And the sound of pelting ice soon became drowned out by the lyrics of For All We Know and the magic of Frankie’s voice, along with the familiar aroma of cookies baking in a new oven.