Again new

It feels to me, that a new year starts in the month of March.  Perhaps it is all the new growth and new life emerging from the dormant, death of winter.  Looking back across all my years, it has forever felt this way to me, perhaps, because it is the month when I joined this world.  Emerged from a warm, cozy womb to cold, beautiful world.  It is my new year, the time of my first breaths, the next year I am blessed with life.

The beginning of this list began nearly a year ago, and in my meanderings, the gems of life have been appreciated, but not recorded.  Now that I am reading her book I have become compelled to write things down in the little, warn, notebook in my purse.  The one that has pages ripped out and pencil drawings on many pages buy my artist-of-a-three-year-old.  Bits of her, sprawled down throughout the supermarket.  It now records the beauty of life, the gifts I find as I live in each moment.  I'm looking, and they are abundantly there, precious, amazing things.

Today in pilates class I realized that I have spent the majority of my days wishing.  Wishing for things to go my way.  Wishing for a different, more perfect body.  Wishing for selfish, selfish things.  This is the year that thanksgiving is beginning to pour over me as hot tea filling a cup.  Warmth.  It is amazing to feel it.  My heart feels like spring on a cold winter day, full of color and life inside a cold aging body.

26.  Flags, snapping in the wind.
27.  The sweet smell after a warm rain.
28.  Everything washed clean by the beating of rain drops.
29.  Finding cloud shapes in the dusk sky.
30.  A cloud that can be a tornado, a T-Rex and a woodpecker all at once.
31.  Tiny, unseen droplets of water that make that cloud.
32.  Slender crescent moon
33.  Giggles that squeak!
34.  Crisscrossed ankles.

35.  Naps in the sunshine.
36.  Gentle, joyful interruptions to nap time.
37.  Waking to my tiniest one's joyous songs.
38.  Snowflakes, big, wet and sticking to all of creation.

39.  Operation Worm Rescue, by my tenderhearted boy.

40.  Gentle reminding that even birthday is not about me, but opportunities to show little ones they are loved deep at any hour.
41.  Pajamas under snow gear.
42.  The right song playing at just the right time.
43.  Warming cold fingers between my own warm palms.
44.  Snuggling a chilled body with damp, stringy, locks smelling of snow and frost.
45.  Watching snowflakes dance; circling, floating, falling, lifting.
46.  Husband, warm, crooked smiles!
47.  White-chocolate, peanut butter cheese cake. mmmmmm.
48.  Birthday balloons, kids singing 'happy birthday' all the live long day!
49.  Birthday wishes arriving all day, bringing smile after smile.
50.  Gifts, wrapped, and cards written and colored with crayon.
51.  Sun, magnified, reflecting off melting snow.