Morning Frost & a little Taylor

Frosty morning on Keller Road

I stepped out this morning on my way to school to be greeted by the first frost of the year. The sun was brightening as it had broken the horizon in the eastern sky, and the grass glistened ever so slightly as its light frost reflected the light. Like my little nieces had sprinkled glitter all over our front lawn. I snapped this quick picture with my phone - complete with utility lines, an uneven skyline, and a dead tree branch in the foreground. No edits. Sometimes nature doesn’t warrant an edit.

James Taylor’s voice ran through my mind - “The frost is on the pumpkin and the hay is in the barn” - the opening lines to “Walking Man.” And Robert Frost - “Leaf subsides to leaf” - because here was this beautiful golden sunrise, but he professes nothing gold can stay. He’s right.

And isn’t that what life really is? Stolen moments because truly, no moment lasts. I try to grip the seconds so tightly, but the reality is all we can do is just feast on the fleetingness — is that a word? — and smile. And move onto the next.

Naomi Shihab Nye, one of my favorite authors whose stories I’m reading with my 7th graders this week, nudges us to slow down. She’s made a life writing about the small moments - “a quiet moment between two noisy minutes.” If we’re lucky, we notice that quiet moment. That’s what this morning was. Noisy moments of making lunches, waking the teenager, and bustling to get out of the house to move onto the next noisy barrage of middle schoolers in hallways. And in between, we can catch the sun reaching its light across a little frost we had this morning.