The Present of Living in the Present

It’s been an interesting winter so far. The local Groundhog, Chuckles, announced that Spring was here to stay. And the weather seemed to agree. Days in the upper 50’s convinced the pussy willows to start fuzzing up.

One crazy hen even began molting!

And a pair of Bald Eagles circled the house one afternoon, probably on their way to the nearby Naugatuck river, where they like to nest.

But then Mother Nature started to laugh and she laughed and laughed and laughed so hard her eyes started to tear and the temperature dropped and her amused tears froze and fell to earth as snow. And it snowed and snowed. And the next thing the we knew, there was a foot of snow. And the Bluebirds and Carolina Wrens stopped singing to mark their territories and everyone was, once again, just consumed with the arduous work of finding food.

Nature adapted. Nature always does. It’s we humans who struggle with that. Change doesn’t come easy to us. We are always trying to bend things to our will. Mother Nature likes to show us how little in control that we are.

The other day I sat looking at our new kitten, sleeping in the crate that had been used by past cats…their names are still painted there for all to see. The cushion that Marzipan slept on is still inside. We lost Marzipan to congestive heart failure last May, 13 days before his sixth birthday. He had survived a rare cancer when he was two and I guess I thought that he was going to live a long life after that. We lost Loki also to heart disease, and Indigo we lost to cancer. And now this little kitten sleeps where they once slept, continuing the legacy. And I noticed that the early morning sun of this mid February day had the exact same look to it as the late afternoon sun of a late September day. If I stared long enough I could lose myself in time. Was it winter or autumn? The cheese pumpkin from last October that sits next to the crate befuddles the matter more.

But all I have to do is lift my eyes, look out the window and see the snow to bring me back to the present. Which is where I need to be. I need to start my eggplant and pepper seeds soon. And to then protect those seedlings from that same little cat in the crate if I want to have a harvest this year. I need to live in and with the seasons. We all do. And it’s best if one can live in the present. Enjoy each season as it comes. The seasons in Nature and the seasons of Life.

I have a birthday coming up and it’s no use pretending that I’m still 29. My body would certainly rebel if I did. Time changes all things. And hopefully we grow and learn and each year become better and better versions of ourselves. When we know better we hopefully do better. I have so many more skills today than I ever had 30 years ago. I can garden better and with much more success, I can knit things I didn’t even dream of back then, I have learned so many different ways to preserve a harvest which has us eating food in February and March that I stored back in June. It’s not so bad to live in this present. But yup, sometimes I think of all the dreams that I never attained. And for some, it’s definitely too late. Sometimes I think of those lost dreams and it depresses me deeply. And then other times, I look out at a garden that I planted from tiny seeds, and I can or ferment or dehydrate the food that came from those tiny seeds, or a put on a pair of socks that I knitted myself, and my Spirit is lifted. This is the Present. It’s not so bad. In fact it’s actually pretty good. I just need to choose the right things to focus on. This HERE and NOW. THIS Present…this IS a Present. And it’s priceless.