Small blessings

I appreciate now the aphorism that youth is wasted on the young-or, at least, appreciate the emotion behind it.

When we are teens or young adults, we strive to command the world around us, thinking we can get circumstances to bend to our wills. Sometimes, it seems as though we can-we find the job that will get us the next one, friends who like to play basketball, or troll the local microbreweries, or talk philosophy while drinking Belgian ales. If we are lucky we recruit a boyfriend or girlfriend who is fun in and out of the bedroom, shares our values, and sees themselves in our lives longterm.

Then comes the phone call in the night or in the sunlit morning-a relative diagnosed with cancer, an accident, a friend gone too young.

We lose our job for no good reason.

A friend walks away or betrays us. A spouse falls for someone else.

When these events befall us, we know how little control we have over either life's vagaries or other people's actions.

As a woman with professional and personal experience of tragedy as well as of joy, I have come to appreciate the times between. Like this morning, when my daughter wrapped our Inky in a blanket and chased around the house with him, only a black and white cat head poking out on one end and a long black tail on the other.

My son seated at the computer holding on to his stuffed bear, ten years old and magically unselfconscious.

The snowdrops poking up out of the chilly damp earth, with the promise of an army of blossoms and grasses ahead.

Thank you God, for the gift of ordinary time.