Julia’s the kind of kid that needs to move. Sometimes I wonder if all I’d have to do for her perfect vacation is research and visit the Detroit area’s top ten playscapes and keep my hotel and airline money in my wallet. Anything that involves using her “big muscles” – climbing, running, sliding, swinging – is exactly where she wants to be.

She looks at every playscape feature like a puzzle; and with her dad’s help figuring it out and providing a little confidence support, she can get a lot done. She still needs a lot of help when it comes to hand strength on the monkey bars and the fireman’s pole (I literally have to support over half her weight as she navigates them), but she has this seemingly bottomless appetite to do what her friends do on the playground.

But it’s tough in the winter when it’s too cold and wet to visit her favorite playground haunts. I see her wistfully looking out the front window at the one down the street from us and I’m reminded, if only for a moment, that her energy is in there. And if she can’t get it out in the way she likes, it will come out in ways we don’t like – including fussing, rebelliousness and the occasional tantrum.

One warm and rainy day earlier this week, I decided to head some of that potential bad mojo off. It had been the most peculiar January in memory and there were lots of puddles in the soft earth to stomp in; so we got on the boots and rain gear and took a walk around the block while Jocelyn got dinner ready.

The rain ebbed and flowed as we walked the neighborhood and Julia happily got out the wiggles in her purposeful quest for standing water. But the sky showed signs of a tentative clearing – as if it was wringing out its last bit of moisture before a front from the north came in to rightsize the temperatures to something more appropriate to winter in Michigan.

By the time we made our second turn, a luminous patch of orange appeared in the west, cutting through the grey-blue of the January sky. Julia stopped and felt the rain on her hands with that hopeful skylight behind her – and I’m glad I had a camera with me.

Owning the rain – looking forward to the sun. Michiganders live in that reality four or more months a year. And though the steely gray sky can seem interminable, we cling to the possibility that that strange, warm orb in the sky will someday come back. Full disclosure: a midwinter bug-out to Florida is sometimes necessary.

But it isn’t just a weather thing. It can apply in life as well as in this strange work I find myself doing.

Yep. I’m still in the middle of it. We got through the holidays after my Dad died; but now the distractions of cookie baking and family visits are gone. I have to start figuring out what “normal” looks like.

What’s it like to put one foot – one day – in front of another?

What’s it like to set aside the ache for a bit and be present for someone else?

And what does it mean to leverage the ache and speak life out of it when I am in that presence?

When I’m in quiet, I ponder those things; but I also give myself permission not to have his loss at the front of mind all the time. Yes – those occasional vacations to the warmer climes of the mind are necessary, I’ve found. Even as I toil to re-weave my rhythms and carry this strangely heavy void, there is ultimate good in working from our rest.

And then – like travelers returning from midwinter break – I come back again to the dim light of winter and continue the good yet halting and uncertain work. We ultimately have to be honest with ourselves that there is progress yet to be made.

But we also believe the sun will show itself again. And an escape from the cold won’t be as necessary.