i can't help but love it

Let me read it to you...

I can’t help but love them, the dried-up old weeds in the neglected flowerbed that now look like furry little golden chipmunk tails, swaying in the autumn wind.

I don’t know what they’re called. I only know I planned to slash them down, along with all the other unknowns, months ago when summer was bringing them up faster than the intended flora; a task not crossed off on my to-do list.

I had to reach through prickly something-or-other to grab them, so tall now that their fuzzy caterpillar ends dangle overhead against a cold, slate sky. It’ll snow soon, and every leaf and stem will be buried until April. Except for this bunch of whatever-they-are, taking refuge on my front porch.

I can’t help but love the Christmas carols playing overhead at the supermarket a week before Thanksgiving. I hum along as I pick out the best Anjou pears and place them into a wispy bag. I can’t help but love the angsty teenager wrangling carts in the parking lot and the woman with three kids loading cat litter into the trunk while her youngest throws her mittens into a slushy puddle.

I can’t help but love the first big snowfall and the quiet prayer I say before starting the snowblower for the first time in the season. Isn’t it terrific, the plume of smoke that rises from the engine when it blooms to life after the fourth try? And the way the wind blows snow back into my face as I push on to clear the neighbor’s sidewalk too, I can’t help but love that.

Maybe it’s weird, but I can’t help but love the everyday mundane chores like laundry and dishes and feeding the cat. There’s a kind of comfort in knowing how it’s done, in doing the least you can do to keep the household world turning. There’s a satisfaction in putting the forks in their assigned spot in the drawer, a relief to find a trash bag when you need one. 

It’s the simple things, like the way my pillow smells when I put my head down on a fresh pillowcase at night before the cat curls up in that perfect spot behind my knees and we tell each other, “Thank you for another day.”

I can’t help but love it…was the TellMe Insight Card™ prompt from November 2019. Set a timer and let those six words be YOUR first six words.