Sifting flour with a fishing net

As a child, my family vacations consisted of walking up big hills in the rain. My dad called it “savage amusement” and we loved it.

Sometimes there was wind instead of rain. On one particularly steep mountain in particularly grey weather, the wind was so strong I could lean my little frame into it and not fall down.

That, I decided, was Wind. And it was great.

Thereafter, any lesser gusts didn’t light up my radar. There might be wind, but it wasn’t Wind so it didn’t get noticed and didn’t count.

We – we grown-ups – do this a lot. We wow at sunsets but we don’t notice the way light dances on a rock. We delight at honeysuckle but a fresh scent to the air on a Tuesday morning before we get into the car is unsmelled.

We notice the rare stuff but fail to notice the easy stuff.

We’re sifting flour with a fishing net.