From weather to feathers

January.  I’ve always liked the look of the word; the way the “n” and the “u” curve down and up again is relaxing.  It’s also my birth month as well as my husband’s, his mother, my mother, my sister, my cousin, several friends and a special friend dearly departed.  It is a month that urges new beginnings and encourages a healthier lifestyle, yet it sabotages my diet with the seemingly endless supply of birthday cakes.

January is not the best month of the year for weather on my sliver of the earth.  There can be long stretches of damp and gray days that alternate between heavy downpours and light misty rain.  Temperatures can range from the coldest days of the year to the warmest days of the winter season.  But somewhere tucked into the month there will be a few days like none other.  These are the days that will fool you into thinking spring has arrived only to then be crushed when the damp and cold return by nightfall.

If you live in the south you know the kind of day of which I speak.  There will be a stretch of the cold and gray, but one day you wake up and a glimpse of heaven greets you at door.  The sky is cornflower blue and the golden yellow sun is shining brightly.  The deep green of the pines that go unnoticed in the summer and fall serve as a vivid backdrop to the ashen bare limbs of the deciduous. 

The air is cool, but a jacket is not required.  The breeze is soft and whispers teasing sweet nothings about gardens and seeds, trying to fool me into thinking it is time to get planting.  But I know better.  I know that this glorious day is only a respite to show me what the future will bring; a metaphor for dreary times in general.  It’s as if God is telling me “Hold on, you can make it.  There will be better days ahead”.

Even the grayest days in January can hold a special treasure.  If you look and listen you can’t help but notice the birds.  The scarlet feathers of the cardinals pop against the umber and ochre shades of the withered grass and dried leaves still clinging to their branches.  The bird feeders out my back window sway with activity of the manic chickadees with their black caps who flit down just long enough to grab one seed and then return to their upper perch.  The small gray tufted titmice linger just a little longer, and the goldfinch flocks cover the thistle seed socks set out just for them.  The goldfinches eat their share of the sunflower seeds as well, and are not disturbed by the much larger cardinals who vie for their positions or the red-bellied woodpeckers who tilt the feeder to their favor.

This is January.  Weather and feathers.  My earthen sliver sleeps yet teems with life. Anything is possible.