Beautiful Day

I woke in early-morning darkness to the drone of our neighbor’s automatic generator brum-humming outside our bedroom window, announcing another power outage.  The internet had aptly prepared us for a windy snowstorm during the night, so this did not come as a surprise. 

An old kerosene heater (a long-term emergency responder originally purchased in the 70’s) kept the house reasonably warm. Our own portable generator (small but helpful) powered the water pump, refrigerator, and, after a few hours of delay, the computer – the essentials. So roughing it really wasn’t so rough. 

When I went outside to the mailbox mid-morning, the trees in the forest on the other side of the road greeted me with a surprise: elegant choreography.  Their white limbs swayed in unison, gracefully, with just the right touch of individual uniqueness, like the dancers in the Nutcracker’s Waltz of the Flowers.  They sighed loudly (evidently very loudly, for I usually don’t hear the sounds of nature), with an angelic voice: mythological Sirens.

I returned to the house to find ducks and swans on the lake curiously relishing the hard-core winter weather. Instead of seeking refuge in a protected cove, they faced the wind and rode the spitting waves – bobbing and pulsing up and down – like courageous wind-up toys intent on proving their valor.

Beauty is subjective, appearing “in the eye of the beholder.” I thought, today, how its charisma can overshadow a potentially melancholy circumstance, and transform inconvenience into delight.