Surrendering To The Snow

Usually, right now,  I’d be in a dance studio with anywhere from five to eleven people warming up to  music that Julz, our teacher, chose just for today.  My mind would be focused on how my body was moving,  I’d be sweating even if I was cold when I first walking in to the room and I’d be smiling or reminding myself to smile.

I’d be enjoying every moment of it.

Instead I’m sitting in my blogging corner of the living room.  My computer on my lap, Fate sleeping on the floor next to me, Bud snoring on the couch.  The wood stove is ticking with warmth and the window is beaded with melted snow.

The birds have abandoned the feeder. Snow is falling in a crazed cross-hatch. Instead of the bright red head and soft gray feathers of a house finch, the window is a rectangle in shades of white.

Last week I strained my back opening all  the old wooden windows in the house. Some stick and others are blocked by furniture and plants.  I should have been more careful, but in my hurry to let the fresh air in on that 60 degree day, I moved wrong.  That evening my lower back and pelvis was one big ache.

It’s gotten better.  I’m fortunate to have a husband who is happy to massage my back and encourage me to rest.

But I haven’t been able to take walks and move my body the way I’m used to for a week.  I’ve been low all day because of it.  I know Bellydancing would have brought me back,  it always does, but not tonight.

After a morning of doing my shipping (thank you to everyone who bought my Meditation Trees) the afternoon slipped away.  I never got to my studio.  So I decided to take a short walk in the woods hoping it would help.

The thing is, I was looking for something.  Something to bring me out of myself, a sign, or one the many little miracles of the woods.  But as I walked even the small wonders that would usually call to me, felt empty.

That’s when I knew I couldn’t look outside of myself to feel better.  It had to come from within.

Then the snow came.

A rush of heavy wet snow blowing in all directions at once, taking up so much space it was if a white cloud had descended on the farm obscuring the world around us.

And with the snow, I felt myself surrender.

I surrendered to feeling low.  To not being able to move the way I’m used to, to not going to dance class to feeling what I felt without qualifying it.

The snow was an excuse, a rationale, a giving up, giving in and letting go.  The solace of a snow day.

I decided to take it.

Some time after that my iPhone pinged.  “The skunk cabbages are coming up” my friend Jackie texted me with an enticing photo of the “dinosaur plant.”

I began to wonder if the skunk cabbage were up in my neighbors swamp.  I pictured the strange sculptural flower melting the snow around it.

I felt my spirits begin to lift.