Something Warm This Way Comes

It's a still and harsh winter here.  The temps are way down in the single digits.  Sunday morning was only 8F and the forecast is for snow for six of the next seven days.  I don't know about you, but I've had enough of winter for, oh, the next six or seven years.  Winter started back in October and except for one mild day in the past two months, it's been dark, cold, and bleak in this area.

A few years ago I was blessed to find some extraordinarily colorful blogs.  It's a wonderful thing that I stumbled across those blogs, they saved me from an interminable winter, they gave me hope that Spring would return.

I had a similar feeling just recently, it's been snowing here for a few days, not a lot of accumulation, but it's bitterly cold, dark, and still outside.  It feels as if the town is imprisoned by an unending and empty, languid weakness, stuck in a fog of frozen vapor and with time, it's growing colder, and winter is getting even larger, deeper, and stronger. 

The tree branches are bare, the icicles are getting fatter and longer, and only a hungry squirrel or two are scavenging, scratching through the snow for something to eat.  The birds have disappeared, no melodies, no chirping back and forth, no cawing sounds.  Just silence except for the cars driving past.

Then something arrived in the mail.  A package with a customs form was in the pile of useless mail and a magazine touting Valentine's Day.  A total surprise.  It warmed my heart.  It made me acknowledge an act of kindness within the dark winter day, which gave me a new outlook.  It came from across the cold Atlantic Ocean all the way to me. 

It arrived on a day of being unsettled, not discontented.  I have to admit it made me cry a tiny bit to receive this little gift.  This was a kind gesture from someone I do not know apart from purchasing items from her Etsy shop to give as gifts.  The winter wears me out and this unexpected present helped lift and brighten my spirit.  Ali went to the trouble of packaging and mailing at her expense when she was not obligated to do this, not at all.

Ali Dufty sent me this beautiful collection of gift tags.  I have an affinity to the dandelion, and yes, I know it's only a weed, but do you remember blowing on them or waving them until the tiny seeds were scattered ensuring your wishes went out to be fulfilled?  They symbolize warm weather, childhood, mowing lawns and the great smell of new mown grass.   And then there is, "Chocolate."  Oh, yes, chocolate in all forms, yes, that's for me.  These dessert tags, are, well, just scrumptious.  Not an original perception on my part, but oh, so true.  Delicious.

You never know how or when something you do or say will affect someone.  The mail service was slow in delivering these, yet they arrived on just the right day.  Thank you, Ali Dufty. 
Thank you very much. 

http://www.etsy.com/shop/alidufty