continued from page fighting a ….

continued from page

fighting a stubborn cold.

During the heaviest of this yellow siege, I looked out the window and noticed Gene squatting down in our driveway, studying something on the surface. He was fascinated by a line of ants creating a clear path through the pollen as they marched to their destination, carrying little morsels of this and that to an ant hill somewhere close by — a demonstration of nature finding a way, even through the densest pollen cover ever.

When I could bear it no more, I spent an entire day blowing it around with a leaf blower and rinsing it off of our wraparound porch and back deck with the high-power spray nozzle.

“I don’t think it’s over yet,” my husband said. “Yeah, I know,” I said. “Resistance is futile, but I’m trying to gain a little control over it.”

Finally, mercifully, the rain came this weekend — three inches over two days to be exact. Not a heavy downpour, just hard enough to wash the world clean again. The pollen settled into the cracks of our driveway and along the edges of our sidewalks, like Mother Nature had outlined the concrete with a yellow highlighter.

I can’t help but see a metaphor in all of this yellow stuff. Sometimes life covers us in difficulties so thick they seem to darken our days. But just like the pollen, these challenges are temporary, and eventually we find, as the ants do, that even in the midst of overwhelming circumstances, there’s always a way through if we just keep moving forward, one small step at a time.