it’s been a cold miserable spring but as doctor suess says, no wind ever blows forever. sometimes the big challenges of life can feel overwhelming, there’s no doubt. but the future is not ours to see or to know, it doesn’t belong to us.

what does belong to us, if we choose to own it, is the ability to feel intense gratitude for what we have. it’s an odd challenge, to narrow my focus from the whole huge picture to just one tiny beautiful detail of my life at any given point in time, and feel grateful for that.

the funny thing is, once i start doing that, i start seeing other tiny beautiful details, then others, like beads on a necklace, and soon the whole picture of my life is completely different.

so this spring there have been good books and new blogs full of beautiful words and images and ideas and optimism. there has been thrifting, and lots of baking with the little one as a helper – cookies and muffins and special saturday night dinners. there has been lavender laundry soap for the sheets, and plans being laid for the not-so-distant summertime: gardens, a house rental on the beach, long training runs, summer dresses and skirts. there was opening day for detroit baseball, and there have been many blustery visits to the woods to feed the birds and watch the swans building their nests. there’s been coffee with cream, and public radio, and knitting (well, thinking about knitting, anyway.)

my motto for this year is taken from the words of albert einstein.

‘there are only two ways to live your life. one is as though nothing is a miracle. the other is as though everything is a miracle.’

we actually saw the sun for awhile today, after such a sheer drudgery of a freezing, grey, & windblown march as i can’t recall. spring is not normally my favorite season but this year I can’t wait for the mud & buds & balm.

until then, another week of space heaters, wool coats, & chapped hands.

first, though, a weekend of books & playdates & maybe some knitting & cooking in between all of the normal chores that keep our lives ticking along.

I hope you enjoy yours, all the simplest nice things of beauty & peace.

sometimes, when you’re cleaning out a very old closet, you find something that still might fit if you give it a good airing out, and wear it in a new way.