This week's weather seems to have put everyone in a mood. Facebook-for-50-year-olds, usually rife with Pinterest recipes, photos of burbling grandbabies and updates about Husker basketball (Nebrasketball, they're calling it!), reads like a Hells Angels convention pamphlet these days. So much doom and gloom, not to mention so many specific and violent threats aimed Mother Nature's way. Or Ken Shimek's way. Or whoever is to blame's way.
Maybe it is because of all these despairing posts--the utter disgust spat out by frozen fingertips pounding keyboards--that an old, happy-ending story has crept back into my view. I now believe the story, which I witnessed nearly 20 years ago, has bubbled up into my consciousness so that we might know "What Life Will Be Like When Daffodils Bloom Again."
I know I've written about this before, but times are hard, which gives me permission to repeat myself.
"What Life Will Be Like When Daffodils Bloom Again"
It was early summer and I was just heading into the Sunken Gardens with Rasta, the fine family hound, after our early-morning jaunt around the bike trail. There below us were two dogs--one very wet, yipping Yellow Lab bounding around the fish pond and his sputtering, small friend who was trapped amongst the lily pads. No matter how much he urged his friend to the pool's edge, the little guy was absolutely helpless to get there.
It really was a pathetic sight, watching these two misfit friends both wanting the same thing and neither finding a way to make it happen. So I did what any dog-loving fool in need of a happy ending would do. I tied up Rasta and waded into the pool.
The lab was beside himself as I neared his little friend, barking and bounding around the pool, offering me directions so I wouldn't muck up the rescue. His friend, I suppose, was aware of me, but only in that vague way that a desperate being senses someone else's presence. I scooped up the little fella and slogged my way to the pool's edge, where his friend could hardly contain himself.
As soon as his wet paws hit the ground, those two dogs--absolutely elated to be together again--ran wild circles around each other and then sprinted through the park to some unknown destination, where I hope they are today (because this is a happy-ending story and I am its writer).
Soon enough, then, I imagine we will all be given a gift, a string of glorious, warm days set against a bright blue backdrop. And we will be beside ourselves, nearly tripping over our tennis-shoe clad feet to gather together again outside, blubbering like happy idiots. We will be like long-lost friends, reunited after some unspeakable darkness, unable to contain our glee.
That is the gift of this harshest of winters. A reunion like no other.
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