When I was a little girl, my family took vacations with other families. In the evenings, our families usually ate together in one of cabins, while the adults recalled the day’s adventures and planned the next day. When I heard of plans to visit a special restaurant that featured outdoor dancing, my heart leapt. This special restaurant had a large concrete dance floor surrounded by lights strung from pole to pole.  

Years ago, I was riding on a ski lift with my husband. The wind was blowing, but not enough to cause me to shiver in the cold. No, I was shivering due to what my eyes were taking in. My heart was overwhelmed with the beauty of the thickly-laden snowcapped branches of the pine trees.

Standing in the living room, I looked to the mountains in the distance.  I immediately threw up my hands and turned myself into a spinning machine. I imagined myself as Julie Andrews singing on top of the mountain, “The Hills are Alive with the Sound of Music” as my husband sat with a worried look on his face.

On the back porch in the cool of the evening, I sat as a child with my father as he de-stressed from work. He was a man of a few words, so I watched silently as his strong hands cracked pecans produced from the large pecan tree in our yard. It was a peaceful time. Every so often he would lean over with a fresh pecan and pop it in my mouth while smiling down at me. We had a red cardinal that lived in that large pecan tree and at times it would make an appearance.

As I sat at my desk and looked out the window at the fluffy clouds in the sky, I was reminded of a conversation with a friend a few years ago. She told me the area east of us in Texas had gotten snow, and we had not even seen a drop of rain. At that time, I felt a little twinge of sadness because I love to see snow.