LIFE IS FULL OR EMPTY DEPENDING ON THE PILOT

Spring is just around the corner and it will thaw all the winter residue and set the pace for the summer blast. Funny how the weather seasons are so predictable in a very unpredictable way. We can predict the possibilities based on the signs, becoming more adept and right, as tools improve, that aide in those predictions. Amazing!

Weather has always intrigued me. If you would have asked a young me 50+ years ago, what I wanted to be when I grew up, I would have said a weather watcher. Not one of those that reported on TV but one of those that studied it. Years later, I would learn about becoming a Meteorologist ... but I would become lost in life issues that postponed any kind of education and faded all Meteorologist desire over the years to the present ... where I can ask Siri, on my iPad, what today's weather will be. She graciously tells me and lists the days temps. Weather now at my finger tips! What a concept!

We love it when the grandchildren come to stay for a bit with Po and Nana. We got our first grandchildren stay, this year, when our Lincoln, NE clan had Spring Break during March 9th through the 13th. 

With the warmer weather, we took our annual hike around the rocky beach near Lake McConaughy's Morning Glory. Much of Lake Mac is still frozen and the warmer weather made the ice unsafe to walk on. I watched my family scramble around the rocky beach from paths on the bluffs above. I had been feeling wobbly most of this day and my feet were still hurting. Why were my feet hurting? That is a mystery for me to yet solve. 

From my vantage point I took pictures and mentally compared this hike with past hikes and family time together. These grandchildren are changing fast and with as much predictable unpredictability as the weather. I wish they wouldn't change sometimes. I wish they were still babies, or that we were still in one of those happy family times. But as we all hike today, each of us are dealing with life issues. We are each in a personal struggle or stress, making this hike somewhat strained but worth the effort. We may not have solved all our problems but collectively we hiked away from them for a bit.

The pictures I took seemed so bland .... and like the bland, icy landscape before us, my emotions were just as bland. From my emotional vantage point at 61, soon to be 62, I found I was just as wobbly and full of growing hurts from my life that are leaving me feeling frozen in helplessness. I keep looking for a path, on a bluff, from a vantage point where I can understand what I need to do or to let go of. 

Waiting for the thaw ...