Snow!

Since I have joined the club of wheelchair users, one common thing that many of us hate is snow! It's wet and cold and nasty and it gets all over your tires and then the tires throw it all over your lap and clothes. Your sleeves stay wet from pushing, you can't roll through the thick stuff and you get stuck, the ramps are icy and you have no control over your chair. Someone is normally hanging on the the back of your chair so that you don't crash down an icy ramp and this does not help our pride in independence! We have poor circulation and once you get chilled you can hardly warm up at all. Please take note that this is why we have blankets around our legs! It's just nasty and awful!! This is my second winter in a chair and as I was looking at our snow the other day, I thought about how pretty it was. I also thought about how that was my first fond thought of snow since I had become paralyzed. I have not converted so much that I love to be in the snow, but I have learned how to deal with it a little better.

There is something about looking outside with a fresh coat of snow all over the ground. Everything looks so clean...so sparkly...so unified. The normal view of the outside is full of colors and textures. The rough greens and browns of a winter yard, the dirty gray of asphalt, and the many different variations of bushes, sidewalks, gravel, and yard ornaments are a rainbow of colors. But when it snows, something magical happens. Everything that I had become accustomed to looking at in a certain way has now been completely transformed. There is suddenly a simplicity that has taken over my outside environment. Everything has been covered with whiteness and it is all so beautiful and quite breathtaking. It makes you pause a little bit longer at the window as you look out admiring what has just happened.

Life can be like this you know. When something major happens that completely changes your view of life as you had always known it, don't resent it. Look at it as a new opportunity to simplify, to be given a clean slate to start over, to pause just a bit longer over the little things and savor that moment. Don't get bogged down in hate over the details....find the beauty in your life and hold on to that. While your at it, go make some new and unique tracks of your own in that snow!