On Saturday, Julia and I sat in the sun drenched widowed front of a sausage shop feasting on Chinese-southwestern inspired links and real French fries. None of it our usual fare. Then again, the amount of sun pouring through those windows didn’t feel like usual fare either. So much so that I squinted as I typed and Julia’s glasses turned a very dark gray. But we did not move. I squinted as long as I could little and let every inch of exposed skin drink in the light.   

Perhaps I photosynthesized. Julia did not humor my hypothesis.

February ended in a gentle breeze and I was convinced that spring was around the next corner, not more than a month away. We spied some green shoots in the front garden. Of course, the first of March, it snowed chasing away my belief in early spring.  

I will carefully begin gardening again this spring. A month at a gym and religiously doing my PT exercises is beginning to reap results. There are actually days without pain meds and activity stopping pain. And I can bend down! I have never before taken such joy in retrieving dropped paper. I can even put on my socks without sitting down. Still, I have been grumpy so much of the last few weeks. It has been a long sloshing trek towards wellness. I am not there yet. Still a bit scared to go to a yoga class. What if I re-insure myself? No reason to believe that this will be the case but . . . 

Oh, I hate “buts”! There was a point during the last month when I confronted the notion of not gardening again. Of not returning to yoga class. Of making a much more sedentary life. I took it in and tasted it, like one does with fine chocolate. I understood something new about possibility before I spit it out and headed to the gym.  

I cannot help but be an optimist. Perhaps cockeyed, to be sure.