I walked out the front door this morning and wanted to stop in my tracks. I was suddenly inclined to cease my doing and my going and maybe even my being, right there on my sidewalk. I wanted to stretch my arms out to the left and the right like that Timothy Green kid, soaking up the sun that peeks today between gray dots of clouds in the sky.

I need the sun.

It's times like now when I've hardly seen it's warm face that I miss it so. I find myself wishing to be a bird or bear so I could migrate or hibernate and just avoid the cold.

The lack of sun in January and February has depressed my mood. The forecast of more winter has my soul groaning. I know, "You'll be whining in the July heat ," you say. I won't. Well, maybe I'll complain a little by midsummer. My upper lip will be beaded with what I've come to call a SETX sweat-stache. That will be after days and days of sun and heat. That will be when the sun has come out of hiding and it's face becomes so familiar that I forget to appreciate its warm rays.

There might be the one thing that makes winter bearable. The gray and the cold makes the uncloudy days seem brilliant; the rain, the sun so fine.

Maybe I need winter too.

If sun is the reality of all things bright and beautiful, then surely the dark days are where hope is made.

Hope is the thing with feathers that perches in the soul-and sings the tunes without the words-and never stops at all. -Emily Dickinson

Tomorrow I've been told the cold will come back to pay a visit. It's chill will attempt to invade not only the uncovered parts of my skin, but my soul. But I'll be that bird. Not flown away to a warmer land, but singing a hope tune.

And today, when the sun is to be found, I'll be a glow stick positioning myself to take in all the light and warmth I know how. I'll carry the sun within me into the cold of tomorrow. I'll be wrapped in warm feathers; thoughts of sunny days past and bright days to come.

I'll remember that the sun, wouldn't be fully known as the sun without the clouds.

And I'll be thankful for the sun

and for the clouds and cold too.

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