Have you ever glanced down as your hand floats to rest on the desk top and suddenly seen something beautiful?
The fingers you always thought so average, if not stumpy, long and tapered? The worn skin covering the back of your hand smooth and soft. The vein gently pulsing over tendons as fingers flex and curve.
How many countless times has your hand moved through the air towards something?
The simplest of things. Washing a plate. Pulling back a curtain. The hardest of things. To embrace. To let go. To gently cup a child's face. To dig down into the earth. Planting is always an exercise in faith.
So is love.
Hands are a wonder of engineering. And yet we rarely think about them. Where they have been. What they have touched. What they do.
They seem to be always in motion. Unnoticed wings.
Have you ever really looked at the finger print a butterfly once tasted? It must have found that finger print extraordinary. It stayed for a long time, as butterflies must measure it, gently tasting every curve and line.
Have you ever suddenly found wonder in what you are? Has wonder found you unexpectedly, so unlooked for that the world softly shifts and reforms?
It's the hushed hours before dawn.
Somewhere down the coast, a blizzard is brewing. 56 million lives are waiting in its path. Tonight, those 56 million people are sleeping.
But wind, currents, cold, lows and highs, the ever circling gyre wait for no one.
Down the coast, there is a home where parents are watching their daughter fight for life. Across the country, across the world, people are thinking of them, of her.
There's a storm being born. There is a woman who has fought to live. We share a birthday, but she always had more light. Extraordinary light.
Fingers flex and shift over the keyboard. They are momentarily beautiful.
She is always beautiful. Her smile lighting up rooms and hearts.
The wind and snow will come. Waves will crash and foam upon the shoreline. The drifting hiss of snow will scour the streets. Houses will flinch and trees tremble in the wind's howl. For long hours the storm will rage. Then the sun will rise on a new day.
An infinity of snow flakes draped like the whitest satin over cities, towns, fields, and forests will make everything extraordinary.
If you look there will be colors in the snow. Light reflecting minute prisms of blue, rose, gold. Snow is never just white. And life never just ends. Light goes on, transforming everything, just like love.
The daughter, the woman, the birthday sister - goes on. We go on. We all go on, together.
Extraordinary. Magical. All the colors of light and unexpected as a butterfly kiss.
While waiting for the storm, while thinking of Cedwyn, all unexpectedly the familiar became the extraordinary. In the midst of sorrow and worry, wonder came soft as butterfly wings. This is for Cedwyn, her parents, for all of you. How beautiful, strong, and fragile we all are.