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Hitting the Pause Button.
We had a snow day yesterday. Mother Nature hit the Pause Button. Again. If I have not made it clear to you before, I am not a fan of the cold nor the winter weather that accompanies it. But something I started thinking about something yesterday that warmed my winter-despising heart. (Well, just a little.) Here’s how I arrived there.
Did your day yesterday, contain any of the following elements?
- Giggles
- Huge grins at the sight of the snow piling high
- Snowball fights
- Hot chocolate (with whipped cream, of course)
- Book reading
- Imaginative play
- and finally, LOTS of toys, evenly sprinkled throughout your home
I was going to write about capturing the still life compositions that childhood leaves behind in its wake. Toys piled up, entire scenes of characters built by tiny hands. Momentary time capsules of childhood left as an offering to parents. But after rereading the list above, the message should really directed to any of us, parents and non-parents alike.
Winter packs a gift for us; reminding us to stop where we are, and take in the moment. We can’t freeze time, but a good dose of winter weather occasionally forces to stay put. Literally. The roads are too slick to be on and we need to set aside the never ending list of errands and things to accomplish. If the power is knocked out, then we find ourself “unplugged.”
Okay, so it doesn’t always feel like a “gift.” Businesses can’t get the foot traffic that is needed to survive and flourish, which is especially important to small businesses. Commuting is treacherous and sometimes puts us and our loved ones in danger. And those pesky schedules that are finely tuned and took hours to hash out? Yep. Those are tossed out the window, buried under at least a billion snowflakes. If you work from home, and if you share said home with those usually adorable kiddos of yours… well then, there’s another unexpected juggling act that you are called up to perform, tossing on your ringleader hat while you are still wearing your professional one underneath. But those days really ARE a gift.
Nature calls a time out for us. We can sit, and wriggle and squirm and not take the lesson as it comes. OR we can settle into the unplanned “pause” and appreciate the small things in the moment. Hmm… I’ll take the “pause” and pass on discomfort, please.
It’s just for a smidgen of time that things are disrupted, but what if you embraced the time out that nature called? What if, for even a portion of the time, you stopped and observed? You would catch glimpses of smiles, eruptions of giggles, widening eyes as stories unfold and entire scenes laid out at your feet. You would observe more. Hear more. Feel more. Taste more. You would live in the moment more if you just held the gift in your hand for a moment, and said, “thank you.”
A perfectly crafted village of legos, an extra few dishes from freshly baked cookies, a pile of books upon a nest of blankets, soaking wet hats and gloves drying by the heater- they each are remnants of Winter’s gift. Appreciate it as it happens, for the gift is fleeting, and then suddenly routine returns. Whether you take out your camera to document these little gems, or just stop long enough to reflect on the moment, don’t pass up something so valuable to your life – the moments of your life.
The photos that inspired this reflection? They were taken the other morning after coming inside from the morning bus pick up. Not a single thing was staged; to be honest, I couldn’t have staged it if I had tried! My gift that morning: a reminder of the previous snow day’s tea party… which our furry family member decided was the perfect napping place.
Maybe if we remember this during the next, ahem, round of snow, we will give ourselves permission to enjoy it a little a more.
