Watershed

This is perhaps the prettiest stationery I've ever received a letter on. This cottony cream dream of Italian paper has Florence deftly illustrated on the front and sage life advice stained in quill's ink on the back. The closing line of the letter:

"Most of life can be so mundane with chores & stupid stuff-

  GRAB THE WORLD and make this life BIGGER!"

The letter arrived mere weeks after I read A Room With a View and the irony caused me to wonder if my own life would unfold if I simply stared at the Arno from a stone bridge or got kissed on an Italian hillside teeming with blue flowers. (Books make me crazy, I've established this.)

Three world travelers whose opinions I respect confirmed that of all the places they've been Florence was the best. It's on my list, although David and Il Duomo will have to wait a few years until international travel seems feasible again. Florence awaits but a year ago I was in Paris. An actual year ago today I was making croissants in Montmartre with Emmanuelle the French chef who had never tasted kale. 

Something about the way it feels outside, the way the lilac buds are whispering something big and fragrant and miraculous is in the works, the way the pink plum petals are shunning the confused April snow, the way my first daffodil is trumpeting change is coming, reminds me of last year. Paris was a big grab. After Paris my life got bigger. Momentum gained and things long still began to quiver, simmer, near boil.

I've been a watershed for years, my barren terrain slowly collecting moisture from rain clouds and the occasional seeping brooklet, always begging for the big fill. This winter I witnessed the whiteout of my emotional mountains and that "Paris feeling" is back. Change is so close. The snowpack is about to melt and I am bracing myself for the flood, the blessed overflow that will cure drought. Every parched place of me will soak up what it has needed for so long and the surplus can flow on, flow down, flow away, not to be needed again.

This summer my hillsides will be verdant and varnished with flowers of baby boy blue hue. I will be wilderness no more.

Occasionally a good thing falls right in your lap. Now and then a good thing just isn't meant to be yours. I believe the majority of good things are waiting to be grabbed. So go out and grab what you want from this life! Sometimes you just have to go for it.