We bought wind chimes yesterday.  The really nice ones that sing delight into the breeze.  The day before we bought hanging baskets of colorful flowers, two pots of bursting spring happiness to grace our porch.  Our porch that used to be a gathering place for neighbors, one we neglected for the summer last year as our lives crumbled.  We stopped bringing our own colors, decorating our own souls.

A season of mourning has ended, we are entering a true spring.  It is one that still contains rainy days, unexpected cold fronts, empty porch chairs.  These are the things we can’t control.  We can add flowers and wind chimes and delight in the beauty of growth and bird songs, colors and sweet melodies of chimes.  Our choice to see the joy around us, our choice to create some joy.  This season we are choosing to decorate our own porch, not for anyone else.  We are enough.

Next to find joy in weeding the long neglected landscaping, to recover the trampled hasta and remember there is life beyond the porch.  Today it is sufficient to sit just outside the door, breathing in joy, remembering spring is here.  We made it through the long dark winter.