Awakening to Gratitude (Day 1 of 10 Days of Gratitude)

I think there's such a thing as "a month of Sundays" (or is it Mondays?); how about "ten days of Wednesdays"?  A lot of folks have taken up the online challenge of posting 10 days of pictures of things they are grateful for.  Because I love to write (hear myself talk?) I'm accepting the challenge in this media.  Remains to be seen if I manage ten days in a row -- either of being grateful, or of blogging about it.

I was awake -- mind going full throttle, at 2:30 this morning.  I used to resent this; I've grown now to treasure these times of waking up to the dark. (Especially after reading a book by almost that exact title)

Downstairs I briefly checked the 24/7 Coronavirus Pandemic news on The National.  Nothing yet about the federal government invoking the Emergency Measures Act.

On BBC Earth I watched the last few minutes of a show about searching for the smallest particle in the universe.  Then the first few minutes of another show about searching for life on planets in other universes.  And noticed that BBCE's schedule for later in the day includes a whole string of episodes of a show about nature's "weirdest events."

Is reality these days only emergencies and extremities?

I shut off the TV and went to look out the back door.  

There lay the familiar bend in the street, the houses and driveways all along one side of it, the parkette and playground across the road and at the heart of it all.  A still, silent scene emptied of human life under the sentinel streetlight.  Abandoned and forsaken, deserted, just as it is now in the sunlight of cold day as well in this time of social distancing and self-isolation.

I walked to the front door.  Looked out just to see.

And there on our front lawn was a rabbit.  

Brown.  

Warm brown.

Living.  

Quietly moving.  

Confidently and soundlessly nibbling at a particular very little patch of weedy grass of some kind right by the sidewalk, that grows up taller and thicker every year than the rest of the lawn.  That I've not bothered to get rid of.  Nor learn the name of.  That this gentle, dear rabbit seems very familiar with and accustomed to.  Maybe thankful for, as much as an animal feels thanks.

An Easter rabbit, of a race deeper than Cadbury's?  I have begun to wonder how on Earth we will mark and celebrate Easter this year.

As soundlessly as him (or her? how would I know?) I moved full onto our closed-in front porch to be able to see it all the clearer and closer.  Standing still in pre-dawn cold I watched the rabbit graze the front lawn for maybe two minutes before disappearing from my sight into the shadows that lay across our neighbour's lawn.

Life persists.  Warm brown.  Gently confident.  Bold even, for something so precious and vulnerable.  Moving, in more ways than one.

I returned to the dark of the bedroom and of rest.

Grateful.