Snow fell in the dark hours before dawn. We woke to find the world had stepped back into winter’s stark palette.
My son’s careful fence of twigs lies buried, the promised crocus now sleeping beneath fresh powder. Snow traces each budding branch, writing winter’s calligraphy against the steel-gray sky. The bamboo grove bows beneath its burden, forming an icy shelter where hungry deer pause in their ceaseless wandering. White blankets drape the patio chairs where, just yesterday, we turned our faces to the strengthening sun.
We had already welcomed spring’s whispered promises—green shoots piercing dark soil, buds swelling with possibility, buttercups painting the stream bank gold, life stirring in winter-quiet waters. Now, each snowflake falls like a broken promise; each drift buries another hope. The mind protests—seasons should follow their ancient sequence, winter yielding to spring’s gentle advance.
That is how the story goes.
We have no shortage of such stories—maps of how things are supposed to be. Relationships are meant to deepen like tree roots. Careers should grow like steady oaks. Children ought to flourish like garden flowers. Parents should age with autumn’s grace.
But reality flows wilder than our careful charts hope. Divorce shatters bonds we thought eternal. Careers vanish between heartbeats. Hospital rooms hold impossible news. After decades of meticulous eating and exercise, my body will fail before I reach sixty. Spring flowers crush beneath late snow.
We might rage against these violations of our expected order, feeling betrayed by an indifferent universe. Yet perhaps the real betrayal lies in our endless attempt to impose tidy maps on a world that flows like water, finding its own wild way through stone. Our suffering comes not from the world’s wandering path but from our clinging to how things “should” be.
Beyond our maps and measurements, beyond our stories of proper progression, beyond should and shouldn’t, a single cardinal lands on a snowy laurel branch outside my window.
He pauses—red feathers bright against white snow, brown branch.
Then, he flies off.