She’s looking forward to sunnier days

There is a dragon staring at me as I type. He belongs to my youngest grandson, Nicholas. The dragon was left here when Nicholas and his family returned home after my mom’s funeral. We had searched high and low, but the dragon was nowhere to be found.
Since Saturday was so warm, I decided to pick up the trash out of the yard. I was almost finished when I noticed a flash of something orange. It was the bright orange belly of a small stuffed dragon. I can be forgiven for overlooking him at first as the rest of him is covered in a soft camouflage print.
It was so windy out that our trees, bushes and other plant life had soon replaced any debris I had removed. I really should do something about their trash addiction.
I showed the dragon a small clump of emerging snowdrops. I pointed out the rounded tips of awakening daffodils and the buds on the lilacs. We saw where the rabbits had nibbled on the first curled leaves of the tulips. We lingered awhile over the irises I had recently relocated from my mother’s house to ours. I told the toy that I wished I could take all her flowers and replant them in my gardens. Yet, I know that no matter how many I plant, there will always be some left behind.
That little dragon has been through a lot in this past month. It was one of many stuffed animals to roll out of an unknown factory. It spent some time in a display wondering if anyone would ever love it. It jostled for position in a sea of stuffed animals. One day it was chosen by a little boy to be his own.
It was played with, loved, and eventually dropped outside. Despite our best efforts, the child who had chosen it from among many had to leave it behind. It endured rain, snow and below freezing temperatures alone. Perhaps the resident wildlife had moved it, perhaps not. On a bright, windy day it had once again been picked up and hugged.
I am feeling a lot like that dragon. No, I don’t have a bright orange belly. But these past few months have felt like I’ve been rained on, snowed on, frozen and left behind. The breast cancer scare, the uncertainties of radiation, the ever-present fear that something would happen to my mom, and her recent death have left me as lost as the dragon once was.
Yet, there is still the matter of that bright orange belly. It is bright and sunny and screams, “I’m here!” It is what caused me to notice it and pick it up.
Like the dragon, I’m still here. I’m still living my life as best I know how. The dragon has had no say in its survival and neither have I. It is simply the way things are. There is something unknown that compels me to not give in. There is something unknown that insists that tomorrow will always come, and with it the promise of sunnier days.
Yes, recent times have been challenging and sometimes overwhelming, but I firmly believe that the only constant is change. Tomorrow may not be better but it will certainly be different. All that has happened has added depth to my universe. It may not be the way I would have chosen, just like the dragon would not have chosen to be left outside, but we can’t change the past.
No life is without problems. At times, we all get rained on, snowed on and left to fend for ourselves. If we are lucky, someone will find us and hug us and let us know we are never truly alone.