Thursday Thank You Notes

Dear Mother Nature,

I've got a few bones to pick with you. You have been in a foul mood lately. It is cold and dreary in Kansas.
There are floods and earthquakes and tsunamis and tornadoes and we are getting suspicious that you have it in for us.
You knocked our roof apart with hail stones three weeks ago. It won't stoop drizzling, which is much more depressing than outright rain.
But I have to tell you something. I'm realizing that when I review my favorite parts of life, you will be there in nearly all of them.
Like that hail- not very nice.
But very amazing.
Even when you are trying to break my windows, I just stare and think how incredible you are.
And the way the lightning started as one thin streak and then webbed into a cage of light that captured the entire sky.
Some of your best work.
And the way it felt on the first hot day of the year to put my hands in the dirt and look at the centipedes slide through the roots.
And that scrubby bush that we tried to prune, pry and poison, but comes back every year. I hate that bush.
I admire that bush.
I could write for the rest of my life and say what it feels like to look up and watch snow drifting into my eyes or summer nights when the sky grows still and dark and stars lift off from the grass and I have to remind myself that they are just bugs.
I think some of my last thoughts will be my daughters splashing in rain puddles and heavy afternoon light resting on the side of an old barn and the scuttle of leaves across pavement when the Artist and I fell in love.
You are entwined into every best moment I've had.
And even your worst moods (like that storm that dropped sixteen inches of snow in one night on my last day of finals in college) become my favorite memories. The Artist and I trudged for a mile in that snow. We took our finals. We are so glad that we can tell our children that we walked to school uphill in the snow. So worth it.

I still think you might have it in for us. I still wish you would put up a suggestion box and listen to us when we request more 76 degree days. I still wish we could knock February and August off the calendar completely.
But I'm thankful for your variety, your details, your exquisiteness, your spontaneity, and your surprises.
Just maybe knock off the whole winter thing and let spring come now, okay?


My love and gratitude,
Tapper