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“Whose idea was this anyway?” I grumbled after smacking my alarm clock. It was six a.m., which on any given cold winter morning, may as well be the middle of the night as far as I was concerned. I had to be at my Rotary Club’s breakfast meeting in an hour, and I wasn’t happy.
“I don’t even eat breakfast!” I snapped, tossing a pillow at no one in particular.
After leaving the warm cocoon of my bed, I opened the door of Gilligan’s crate. He bounded out into the 60-degree air temperature of our drafty old house, tail wagging, displaying his big goofy Labrador grin. “What are you so happy about?” I grouched, and he raced down the stairs to our front door.
While Gilligan was outside doing his business in our frozen yard, I peered out a cut glass panel in the oval window of our door and grimaced. The poor dog was trying to find a good spot on top of layers of crusty snow from recent blizzards that dropped nearly two feet on our town.
Each new snow was beautiful, at first. Watching chunks of flakes fall inspired us to hunker down, light fires in the fireplace, make soup and feel cozy. The next day after each blizzard, when the sun shone from a brilliantly clear blue sky and the fresh blanket of snow sparkled like diamonds, I felt grateful that, after 28 years of active-duty military life in different locales, we landed in the northeast, where I could experience the beauty of winter.
But that feeling was fleeting. Soon, the complaints began.
“‘Feels like negative four’? Are you kidding me?” my husband Francis said with a dramatic groan, listening to the weather report.
“The car is crusted over with salt again,” I griped. “I don’t know why we even bother to wash our vehicles. We should just let them rust.”
“Ouch! I’ve got one of those little cracks in my finger that I get every winter,” Francis moaned.
“Well, what about me?” I whined. “Every winter, all the skin on my body dries up and sloughs off.”
Gilligan slipped and slid on the crusty snow, finally digging his nails in enough to assume the “kangaroo” position needed to make a clean deposit. When finished, he bounded back toward the door, ever excited for his first kibble scoop of the day.
It was then that I saw it. A tiny shaft of the rising sun had breached the horizon and made its way 92 million miles across outer space to our front door, where a four-inch piece of cut glass split the beam of light into a rainbow that appeared on the floor of our foyer.
I stopped and stared for a moment, mesmerized by the saturated colors. Red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet glowed on a tiny patch of our hardwood floor. The vision was captivating, and somehow thought-provoking. “Nature is so complex, so wondrous,” I thought, the corners of my mouth turning upward into a grin.
Just then, Gilligan barked to come in.
Our laundry room was, by far, the coldest room in the house. I scooped kibble into Gilligan’s bowl, and he nearly knocked me over to get to it. Minnow, our black rescue cat, sat waiting for her daily wet food, her tail wrapped tightly around her front paws to keep them warm.
With the animals fed, I trudged upstairs to get ready for the godforsaken breakfast meeting, my mood having soured again from the chill.
But nature is relentless. Upon entering my bedroom, my breath stopped. In the minutes since I’d let Gilligan in our front door, the Earth had rotated. The east-facing windows were now awash with blazing pinkish-orange light. It shone brightly through our blinds and onto my face, casting rectangles of pink onto the green wall above our bed.
It was impossible not to smile. Winter, in all its brutality, had bestowed upon me its uniquely beautiful gifts — icy gems, luminous hues and hushed silences. And I felt grateful once again.
Read more at themeatandpotatoesoflife.com and in Lisa’s book, “The Meat and Potatoes of Life: My True Lit Com.” Email: meatandpotatoesoflife@gmail.com
