It was a careful snow. Each flake selected its landing place.

   The snow fell slight as a sewing needle. It stitched a thin garment across the lap of my grandmother's front yard as I watched, amid 1955's winter, hypnotized by Beauty.

   A great truck lurched down the road. Flying mud stained the satin. I was mad at the truck. Why couldn't Smooth endure? 

   I'd never seen snow until age twelve because I grew up where it never fell. Westwood Village, California, five miles from the Pacific, was home to sun, and soaring eucalyptus trees.

   A crueler climate greeted me in my new home: Toledo, Ohio. For the next thirty years, I  hated the snow that had stolen my California. A fool, I resented something I couldn't change.

   All we can adjust is our attitude. But it's almost as hard to alter that as it is to stop winter.

   Every Ohio autumn, I feared winter's onset because I never accepted my attitude as something that I could change. 

   Dr. Dennis O'Grady writes that "Probably only 20 percent of people are happy [because] people actually fight to block pleasure…Fear is a big part of the problem."

   Veteran actor Betty White says that she knows too many people "who are afraid to be happy." 

   Religion teaches us we're bad and need salvation. Pleasure is sinful.

   Why? Change is certain, why not celebrate what pleasure we have and find more? The snow will be dirtied. Blood will stain the caregivers clothes. Scars will find the farmer's hands. The lover's heart will be hurt.

   Only courage can redeem us. 

   Pleasure arrives when we accept change. Joy accompanies reveling in whatever occurs.

    Wrinkle smoothed sheets and you will find another beauty.Disturb ordinary rythms and reveal the extraordinary.

   Can this be true of death? The funerals in my best friend's home, New Orleans, reflect a culture that understands.

   Death is grieved, musically, on the march to the funeral and celebrated on the return trip.

   Suffering is endured in its arrival and celebrated as it departs – even as we know it will return.

   "…I suppose most of us will kiss/ a terrible scar to prove we can live with it," Stephen Dunn wrote.

   Can we accept painful change as a gift of life rather than something to be feared?

   My thirty awful autumns in Toledo testify that I didn't grasp that wisdom then. If I had, imagine how my life would have been enhanced?

   Obviously, trucks will scatter mud on the whitest snow. Naturally, a patient of yours will suffer. Whenever we take courage we experience a chapter of pain. 

   But, I write these words amid strength. "The case for suffering is always/ overrated by those whose health/ is good, whose houses are calm," Dunn writes.

   Spread your boldest truth into the careful snow around your "house" and you will learn if you have the courage to hold fast to that truth.

-Erie Chapman  

Photograph – Smooth & Wrinkled #2, 1981 – copyright Erie Chapman 2011