Break Through or Break Down?

It’s raining today and suddenly, out of nowhere it's 40 degrees!  The snow mounds that have been piled too high to be able to see around are melting and creating riverlets of slush.  Just walking to the mailbox was an adventure.

Too warm for a coat?

Do I need galoshes for heaven’s sake?

 

Will I float away down the street if I slip? 

I tip toed cautiously in the snowy areas alongside the flowing stream of ice cubes to retrieve what turned out to be nothing but ads in the mailbox and then made my way back inside deflecting the silly urge to look for something to launch down the little icy river running down the driveway. 

It isn’t winter anymore I concede but neither is it spring.  It’s hovering somewhere in between. Even the Canadian Geese floating on the real river look a little frustrated dodging the chunks of ice passing by. I’m sure I heard one squawk “Oh Come On! Let’s get to spring already”

I sigh as I grasp the fact that the day is a bit like me. Working on an art project today (over and over and over again..the old Draw, Paint, Rip and Repeat cycle) and feeling it just wasn’t right at all I wondered if I was on the verge of a break through or a break down!

And when helping someone the other day with ideas of things to do in Paris, something Dale and I did so many times I looked at the little sign that reads “Paris is always a good idea” and for one brief moment I hovered between the delight of that thought and the darker feeling of reaching for my felt tip pen and updating it in a graffiti sort of way to say “Paris isn’t always a good idea!”  Well it is for everyone else but it was such an “us” place that the very idea of going back without Dale is …well it isn’t a good idea at all.

Later that day I sat reading a good book, reached the end, sighed and once again felt the old recognition of living my life alone and for the first time I hovered between I’m not okay and feeling something new, something like...I’m okay! Not just the academy award winning performance of “I’m OK” but actually experiencing it.

So maybe spring will really arrive, maybe I will have that artistic breakthrough and although I’ll never go to Paris again perhaps, just perhaps I’ll want to.