Sometimes I enjoy a good snowfall. My living room has a gas fireplace and a large picture window, which makes it especially nice for sitting in a cozy armchair and watching the big fluffy snowflakes gently falling to the ground. It’s an incredibly relaxing experience, and almost always leaves me with a lovely feeling of comfort and peace.
Unfortunately, not all Winter weather delivers in the comfort and peace department. Early last week, the local weather forecasters predicted what could be our worst snow storm in over a decade, if not a century. Depending on which TV channel I watched, I learned that we could get up to four hours of freezing rain, followed by several inches of sleet, topped off with twenty-plus inches of snow. Like almost everyone else, I dutifully trotted off to the grocery store to stock up on supplies. Then I checked that my emergency stash of candles and flashlight batteries was adequate and asked my husband to make sure we had gasoline for the generator, (And tried not to worry too much when he told me he wasn’t even sure our generator still worked.)
When it finally hit, the Winter storm wasn’t nearly as bad as predicted. We managed to skip the freezing rain altogether, and had only about an inch of sleet. Sleet can be dangerous, but it’s not nearly as slippery as ice and it also doesn’t bring down power lines. And while we did get plenty of snow, eight inches is a lot better than twenty.
I was happy that we were spared the “storm of the decade,” but I can’t say that I managed to enjoy this snowfall. We never did get big fluffy snowflakes, but we did get lots of wind, very cold temperatures and stiff muscles from shoveling our sidewalks and driveway. And I can only say that I must have had my mind on other things when I stocked up on groceries, because once we were snowed in I discovered that I was missing a few essentials. (It’s really hard to make tuna casserole without tuna, or home-made pizza without cheese.) As far as I was concerned, this snowstorm was just something to be endured.
But then I started getting texts from my daughter, complete with pictures of my grandson out enjoying the snow, as children do. He went sledding, built a snowman and even “helped” with the shoveling. At four, he’s far too young to listen to weather reports, but he sure knows how to have fun in the snow. And thankfully, that reminded me that not everyone saw the recent snowfall through my jaded eyes.
I hope I can always remember just how much it helps to see the world from someone else’s point of view now and then. I hope I can remember that what’s an inconvenience to me might also my granddaughter’s first chance to play in the snow. Because sometimes, all we need to do to brighten our mood is try to see things through the eyes of a child……
Mom’s outside doing some yard work, so I’m taking the opportunity to write another blog post for her. I’ve written a few already, and they’ve been very well received, if I do say so myself. Still, it’s been a long time since she’s invited me to write a guest post. I’d like to think that’s just because Mom is a bit forgetful, and not because she’s getting a little jealous that maybe my blog posts are a tiny bit better than hers. But for whatever the reason, I got tired of waiting for an invitation and since Mom’s not exactly a fast worker, so I’ve got plenty of time to do it now.
Which brings me to the point of this post. As much as I like living with my human family, (and I really do love them), I can’t help but notice that there’s a certain unfairness in the way the different members of the family are treated. Just because I happen to have fur and walk around on four legs, I often have to abide by a totally different set of rules. Take the aforementioned toys, for instance. I’m perfectly willing to share my toys with babies and children, and believe me, when the adults aren’t looking, they play with my toys. But if I dare to pick up one of their toys, I’m immediately told to “drop it,” as if I’ve done something horrible. And they insist on washing the toys before they return them to the child or baby in question, which is just plain insulting.
When I was a young child, I loved going for a pony ride. In those days, even big cities had “pony tracks” where kids could ride a pony a few laps around an oval track, and my parents took us to one on a regular basis. The ponies would line up at the rail at the end of the track, and we would go stand next to the pony we wanted to ride until the track manager lifted us up into the saddle. When everyone was ready, he would signal to the ponies and they’d all walk or trot around the track while he stood in the center, directing them. It was usually the highlight of my week.
All I can say in my defense was that I had the best of intentions. I didn’t want my kids to be the smartest, most popular and most athletic kids in the class, but I did want them to be happy and well adjusted, and spared from the kind of pain I remembered all too well from my own childhood. And so I stayed too close, was overly protective, was too quick to try to right a wrong, and too often took their pain and disappointments as personal affronts to my parenting skills. I might not have over-scheduled my children, but I was over-involved in details of their lives that would have best been handled all by themselves.
Muddling Through My Middle Age 