...these are a few of my favorite things! Do you recognize these lyrics? They are from my favorite musical "The Sound of Music" starring Julie Andrews and Christopher Plummer. The calendar says that Spring will be here in less than two weeks even though Mother Nature obviously has other plans. Before we got sacked this week with yet another Nor'easter, the snow was beginning to melt. Something happened in my neighborhood as the snow was melting that literally stopped me in my tracks. My neighbors had built an ENORMOUS snowman during last week's big storm. I have never seen a snowman this large! He clocked in at well over 10 feet tall, complete with a winter outfit and full-size cross country ski poles. It was a truly fabulous sight! My own kids had been outside during the same snowstorm, but their winter sport of choice was a fierce and competitive game of driveway hockey. The gigantic snowman brought a smile to my face and I am certain must have caused many of the people living on my street to stop and take notice.
Sadly, the skiing snowman did not last long. Less than 24 hours later, even though it did not feel as if it had warmed up enough to begin the melting process, the snowman had slimmed down faster than someone on a cayenne pepper cleanse and his accessories (corn cob pipe, button nose, eyes made out of coal, etc) were all laying amidst the snow on the ground. As I drove by, I was saddened just thinking about how the kids who had worked so hard to build such a masterpiece must have felt as they watched their new friend (and the fruits of their long labor) wash away. I went to bed that night thinking of those creative kids and hoping that their enthusiastic spirits didn't melt away like their snow creation did.
Well this is what I saw the next morning:
What a fabulous surprise! Talk about making lemonade out of lemons (clearly the wrong season for this proverbial phrase, but you get my point). In all of my life, I have never once witnessed a snowman metamorphosis! Clearly the kids I was so concerned about had turned their rapidly melting structure into a completely new (and fabulously creative) character! Seeing that snow duck made my day! I stopped the car and snapped the photo, all the while thinking about how my neighbors must clearly be "glass is half-full" people!
I would like to think that I would take the same approach in my everyday life that the neighborhood kids took with their snowman-to-snowduck transformation. That instead of thinking about what had been "lost", I would savor the special memory of what I had once had, and think about what I could do to create something even more creative and wonderful than what I had the first time around. In the real-life example of the snow creations down the road from me, the snowman was big and noteworthy, but the little snowduck was a literal (show-stopper and) car-stopper!
As the silver white winter melts into spring, let us not think about the things that have gotten away from us. Instead, as everything begins to turn green and begins to blossom and bloom, we should be reminded of the three R's of Spring - rebirth, renewal and reawakening - all of which can be and should be our personal mantras for the coming season