“There’s more to life than increasing its speed.”

(Saw that on a sheet of Hello Kitty stickers the other day, found tucked away in the second right-hand drawer of my late father-in-law’s old desk. It’s like author Richard Bach wrote, in “Illusions”: you quote the truth where you find it.)

Behind me, on the other side of the living room wall that gives us privacy in the bathroom and propriety for folks sitting on the couch, the rising winter sun bathes the sky in an ombré of soft pinks and blues, a stop-you-in-your-tracks morning moment that blurs other options around the edges. Stand at the window and gaze. Watch the unmarked snow as that orange-turning-golden yellow sun sets random flakes to glittering as far as your eyes will track it (you can let the cats out in a minute, coffee can wait). I’m looking out across a unicorn’s playground and if I linger a few minutes more, a herd of them will step out of the woods, shaking their magnificent heads as they prance about. Of course they’ll leave no hoofprints. They’re unicorns.

Not bad for deciding to look through the frost on one’s bathroom window instead of tidying the throws on the chairs or putting away last night’s dinner dishes.

What I just witnessed unfolded imperceptibly and clearly, a gradual tumbling forth of elements in their proper places. Without the ability to glance behind the Grand Curtain of this morning’s natural show, I can only presume and wonder about the staging directions. Timing, for the lifting of our main Star, is everything. At some point, night will become a memory, replaced by light and emerging colors and all that is possible in the first second of a new day. Seconds become moments and objects once shrouded in darkness now show their distinct features—gray-brown limbs of volunteer sycamores standing in a perfect row between our field and the neighbor’s, their bare canopies looking for all the world like the lungs that they truly are. The stiff dried stalks of late summer’s goldenrod are sparkly and wand-like, transformed and reimagined by the snow-dust on their seed heads and the snow blanket at their buried feet. The scene is a painting entitled “Waiting”, or “Patience”.

Much as I love and respect each of the seasons that kiss this land, it also occurs to me that that same sun is rising over the beaches of Tybee Island off the coast of Georgia, shining its first light on the wet backs of a school of breaching dolphins and the gentle top points of a whelk protruding from the packed sand. The good people of Savannah are maybe putting on jackets to venture out for their morning coffee and cinnamon rolls while it takes me a full thirteen minutes to put on long underwear, jeans, two sweatshirts, a quilted flannel jacket and boots with ice trackers just to take the frozen bags of trash from the porch to the car. I’m glad I’m bundled up and am also looking forward to more unencumbered days. I text my sister, Peggy, with articles about collecting shells at Tybee and we half-jokingly begin making plans to be there the minute this pandemic is under control.

From today’s early morning vantage point, I pause to notice how far we’ve come since last March, the slow, small and at times highly-scrutinized steps that took us from there to here. I don’t think we dared imagine this day, this moment from our wobbly perch on the edge of the Unknown last spring. We just kept putting one foot in front of the other, doing the best we could with the information we had at the time. Anxiousness was, perhaps, the undercurrent thrumming of our days, and at times it overtook us, but we pushed it back into its corner, letting gratitude fill the gaps and splash over the sides. Time gives us the gift of perspective. There are some lessons you can only learn from a distance.

Speaking of distance, last Wednesday was Patrick’s first day back to work after an extra-long weekend, compliments of back-to-back winter storms and no school for Presidents’ Day. Well, it was supposed to be his first day back but the car got stuck in the snow right next to the chicken coops. Frustrating, because he’d even done a practice run up and down the driveway the day before, packing down two tire-width trails all the way to the street a quarter mile away. But something must have shifted or drifted in the night and the driveway just wasn’t having it. I suited up (thirteen minutes worth) to help, and we took turns rocking and pushing, forward and reverse, shoveling and slipping, car mats repurposed as traction beneath the tires. The car inched along, shot the mats out from underneath the tires and we just kept at it. Patrick connected with his boss to say he’d miss his first shift and we took a break to get warm back at the house (it was barely 1 degree). To the east, a sunrise was in progress, doing its own incremental work while we grunted and strategized different options. We tried again two hours later, getting the car another twenty feet closer to the bridge, but the undercarriage was no match for the layers of snow and ice beneath; we couldn’t sustain this kind of work down a quarter-mile driveway with a bridge and two hills. A friend recommended another friend’s help, but it wouldn’t arrive until well past the end of Patrick’s second shift. We picked up the shovel and car mats and headed back to the house, stumbling our way through the icy channels and ruts we’d made in the driveway. Eventually, help arrived and the car made it over the bridge, up the first hill and down the next, coming to rest in a facing-outward position. Patrick altered his morning go-to-work exit plan to walk the length of the driveway, backpack and walking stick in hand. He felt sturdy and tough and accomplished, and rightly so. We’d pushed a car thirty feet through packed snow drifts in single-digit temps and didn’t snap at each other once.

Keeping at it is how we got from there to here. One step, one idea, one push at a time. Pick your pause moment. Look over your shoulder to see how far you’ve come. Notice the ruts in the path, the hills, the flat places and the view to the east where the sun always gets the party started.

Feel sturdy. And tough. And accomplished. You’re still here.