Last week the temperature was in the 40’s and I had a hoodie sweatshirt on under my normal jacket as I took the kiddos to school. Still cold in March even here in north Carolina. But this week, the thermometer on the car dash boarder read 82 degrees. Wow, what a difference a week makes.
And then, two days later, almost as if to make a point, the temperature changed back to 50 degrees and overcast, and some of the blossoms lost their luster. The fiery forsythia yellow began to give way to green leaves, and it hadn’t even been a week.
I thought about that, the sudden arrival of the colors of spring, and the equally swift disappearance of some of the blossoms. We have to pay attention every day to what is going on around us and in our world because it changes in the blink of an eye.
Last week my 6 year old twinlets, Leo and Ella, began to complain that one of their lower front teeth were loose. So for the last week my wife Kate and I encouraged them to “wiggle it” on their own in hopes the teeth would work themselves free and we could put them under the pillow for the tooth fairy visit.
This morning, Leo called out at 3am, "hey, my tooth is out" and he proudly marched into our bedroom smiling a toothless smile, beaming with pride in the glow of the nightlight lamp on our nightstand. At breakfast he wrote “Leo’s tooth" on a sticky note and proceeded to label the small glass that showcased his itty bitty baby tooth.
And then, this afternoon, just after lunch, Ella, his twin, mustered the courage to put a wet napkin on her loose tooth, grip it with two fingers and twisted. She cringed, started to half cry and said she felt something rip in her mouth. when she looked in the napkin, she broke into a huge grin and then, smiling wide with pride she announced "I lost my first tooth!", paused, looked at her brother and proclaimed "just like Leo." I thought to myself, how amazing that two kids would lose their first tooth on exactly the same day, but then again, they say twins have a synchronicity in life that is un-explainable. Perhaps that is what Leo and Ella shared today.
So tonight in the Stankavage house, the tooth fairy will come and put a dollar under two pillows. And tomorrow, we will notice the changing beauty of the final spring blossoms on all the trees. Because in the blink of an eye, seasons will change. In life, they always do.
Amen and Amen.