Birth of a blog

I remember it was December and I was the passenger in my (then) boyfriend's car. We were driving down the highway after Christmas shopping all day and I was staring out the window, listening to Dire Straits on the radio. It was about 4:00 in the afternoon, the bright winter light had turned to a mellow grey, and suddenly I realized that it was snowing, the most gentle snowfall I have ever seen. Tiny white, sparkly flecks floated down so slowly, almost lazily against an evergreen backdrop. As we drove, my chauffeur tapped his thumbs on the steering wheel to the beat of the music, and along the side of the highway, the pine trees opened up to a huge grove of birch trees. Even without leaves, the trees looked so pretty, like bony hands reaching up to the sky. The light, the snow, the birches all took my breath away, and only when my boyfriend said "what?" did I realize I had gasped. 


"Isn't that gorgeous?" I said, pointing to the bush. 
"Gorgeous isn't exactly the word I would use," he said, barely taking his eyes off the highway. "It's just trees and rock." A few seconds later he looked at the sky intently. I waited with baited breath, convinced he now saw what I saw. 


"Shit, it's snowing again," he said.



That was when I knew it wasn't going to work with this man. 


I know they say "Beauty is in the eye of the beholder", but I believe we take beautiful things for granted every day. He couldn't see the beauty in the birches. We were definitely not on the same page. A few weeks later, the relationship ended. 


Now and again something will catch me as it did on that early winter day and make me pause for a minute to remind myself that the world is so full of pretty things. There are the glaringly obvious ones, like golden-pink sunsets and shiny silver and blue Christmas balls, but the beauty I'm interested in is the more subtle kind, like a grove of Birch trees nestled on the side of the highway on a snowy afternoon. 


When a friend suggested I start writing a blog, I had no idea what to write about. Then this morning in the shower, I remembered the Birch tree story. This blog is about finding beauty in the everyday, which sounds simple enough, but we often miss the real, ordinary beauty of life as we rush around with our blinders on. 


Christmas is one week from today, and it is so easy to get caught up in the ribbons and bows of the holiday. This year, I have made a vow to find beauty in things that don't cost money, that aren't really things. 


Can you find true beauty in the everyday?