Looking beyond the window

What with one thing and another -- spending time with friends, keeping text company with our older daughter as she packs up all her worldly goods, dealing with a dying battery in a fire alarm (why do those batteries always seem to start beeping after you've crawled into bed?) -- the dishes didn't get done last night, so morning found me standing in a stupor at the kitchen sink, mindlessly scrubbing last night's spaghetti pot.

As the coffee began to kick in and I slowly came in focus, I looked beyond the kitchen window and realized the hooded mergansers were cavorting in the lagoon again, dipping, bobbing, and dancing on the water, creating their swirling patterns in the rosy light of dawn.

So often true -- we get caught up in the responsibility or the drama or the exhaustion of the moment and forget to look beyond the window, to notice the beauty right before our eyes; forget to listen for that song the universe is always humming in our hearts; forget to ask if this is really how we meant to spend our days, in mindless drift from task to task...