Bird on a Wire: Saturday Special

I thought I’d call this post Winter Whimsy, but really, if I’m reaching for whimsy, it’s because I’m on the cusp of crazy, and I’m reaching for hope and light.

So this Saturday Special will be “Bird on a Wire”. Whimsy perched and clinging.

Winter is so beautiful here.

Hazardous, yes… We keep hearing the crash of icicles as they randomly fall around the house. And today, while Nora and I ran and sledded in the bright, frigid afternoon, we found a bunny trail ending  in the middle of a field, with feather swoops marking the spot, and not a drop of blood. (Theory: people with scientific/pragmatic/hunter-gatherer minds are apt to call these animals “rabbits”. Girls who are sad that  they’ve just been annihilated call them “bunnies”).

Still, we are all staying cosy. Which is good. The goats’coats are extra fluffy. They actually frolicked today, in the maze I dug out of the snow in their yard. The chickens, after their initial shock at sub-zero temperatures, are laying again. We were missing Primrose’s tiny eggs, but we found one in a nest yesterday. The chickens don’t necessarily lay their eggs in their designated nests. They also lay in the goats’ manger, and in their bedding, under the heat lamp. I suppose if I were a hen, I might do the same.

But I’m not a hen. I’m a girl who just called a rabbit a bunny.

I realized, after a late night with a grieving daughter, and a happier afternoon with the same, that winter blues and cabin fever—at least for my daughter and I— are about connection deprivation. Today my daughter breezed out the door to be with a friend whom she has missed for a year, laughing as she went.  And my sister breezed in (and out again) on her way through town;  I loved the sunshine she brought with her.  There is power and healing when our own laughter mingles with a kindred spirit’s.