Today is a knockout gorgeous morning in Valley Center. The air is crisp and cool, the leaves and other flora are every color of the rainbow, and the sun and wind are just the right proportions to make one feel the experience that is autumn in Kansas.
My nieces are coming home today, and will stay through tomorrow. They are away at college, and don’t make it home a lot. It will be a time of visiting and catching up for my brother and his family as they reconnect. We were able to do that with our boys last weekend as they came to Wichita for a visit and to support us in our transition.
It’s also the time to think about the holiday season. Thanksgiving is closer than we may think, and the Christmas holidays are not far off. Then comes the time of the year that I dislike the most…that time from about January 3 to the beginning of spring sometime in the first part of April. It seems that the days drag interminably, and the cold, wind, and winter weather just hangs on for an eternity.
It doesn’t, of course. Eventually, the ground thaws, things begin to bloom and grow, and the signs of yet another cycle of life are evident wherever one looks. I’m reminded of the Bette Midler song “The Rose” where the lyrics talk of the winter snows turning to the springtime.

The Rose
Written by Bette Midler

Some say love it is a river that drowns the tender reed;
Some say love it is a razor that leaves your soul to bleed;
Some say love it is a hunger an endless aching need;
I say love it is a flower and you it's only seed.

It's the heart afraid of breaking that never learns to dance.
It's the dream afraid of waking that never takes the chance.
It's the one who won't be taken who cannot seem to give,
And the soul afraid of dying that never learns to live

When the night has been too lonely and the road has been too long,
And you think that love is only for the lucky and the strong;
Just remember in the winter far beneath the bitter snows,
Lies the seed that with the sun's love in the spring becomes the rose.