OK, every family has its internal arguments.
In this family, my argument is over the lingering Christmas lights at our front door as the days lengthen and heat up in April.
Typically not a month most people associate as Yuletide.
Yet here are those lights that delight me in December, yet annoy me now.
I will admit that neither MaLinda nor Jessica are in favor of keeping those lights.
But they’re not motivated enough to take down Here Comes Santa Claus in time for the Fourth of July.
I thought there was some progress last week, when nature stepped in.
MaLinda announced that her favorite bird, the cardinal, has set down in the North Pole on our front porch.
I have to admit, I get her strong allegiance to this beautiful songster that decks the front door with its bright red Santa-colored plumage.
I took some time off my work cleaning patio windows and sat down.
It’s not that I don’t like cleaning windows – and there is a lot of glass to clean – but I sure don’t mind taking a little breather after going hard or hardly going, whichever.
As I sat there, my mind drifted to something unpleasant.
Then I looked up and there was a bright red cardinal perched above our backyard bird bath.
There’s a lot of symbolism in a cardinal’s presence.
But to me there was no mistaking its intent.
And that was an uplifting feeling that supplanted the negative vibes that I allowed myself to drop into.
I always share my observations about what a creature like a cardinal means.
It shook me awake from a path I need not follow.
And MaLinda followed my feeling in her own perceptive way.
The cardinal was there to remind me that the bird had set up a residence amid the Christmas clutter of lights on the nearby front yard.
Maybe. I obviously had lost that battle anyway, cardinal or no cardinal.
Besides, the St. Louis baseball mascot brought me out of a grumble, grumble moment.
Just in time for our seasonal resident the barn swallow to dive bomb me away from its nest.
It looks like Feliz Navidad is here to stay for a while.
