I went running this morning, in the first warm sunshine. It feels like it's been a hundred years since I've felt the sun. The past few days has been gloomy and cloudy and rainy... and before that it was so cold. But today, there are rivers of melting snow everywhere, running through everything.

You'd think that after all those years of living in the prairies, I could handle the cold. But when winter comes, I stop my running routing, and go for snowy walks instead. It has to do with slipping in running shoes, and also that horrible ache that happens in your lungs when you get all huffy and puffy breathing in cold air.

So I don't run in the winter. And every year, it's like an awakening, to pump my legs and move across the road with my heart beating hard in my ears.

I often get little bursts of revelation when I run. Today, running along the waterfront, my mind started to wander. I was thinking of how Iryn, my 5 year old, loves to complain. It's exhausting to be around her sometimes. It doesn't take much for her to find fault with the world. Craig says when she was born, her first thought was: "This could be SO much better."

Sometimes it breaks my heart to see her this way. I'll plan a lovely picnic and she'll complain about the location I've chosen. Or I'll say we're gettting dressed for a walk in the snow, which I know she'll love, but she'll complain about having to get her snowpants on. Sometimes I want to shake her and say: You're going to like this. Can you just trust me for once? I also want to say: You know, life is gonna be a lot easier for you if you can learn to take it as it comes. If you can look for the beautiful instead of the ugly. Take it from me.

But as I thought about her, I remembered what I've read in so many places I can't even remember where now. It's the theory that everything you experience is a reflection of you. What you love in another is a quality you yourself posess, and what you despise in another is something you posess, in some way, as well.

It hit me: I can be exactly like her. How many times do I resist life, thinking that something could be "so much better", and missing the good that is right there in front of me? I imagined a kind motherly version of the Universe blowing out ever-so patiently, going: Kim, Kim, Kim... Can you just trust me for once? You're really going to like this.

I pondered this while I ran by the boats in the harbor and the locals out walking their dogs. For weeks now, the harbor has been frozen solid, but there were cracks in the ice now, split every which way like a road map, rivers and highways and sidestreets crisscrossing in all directions.

This is a photo I took of the girls last fall, eating apples on the front steps in the sunshine. This is the time of year when I feel I might burst into tears everytime I see a picture of a beach or a sunlit field.... The other day I wandered into a bookstore and found myself in the gardening section, looking at large, bright books of colorful japanese gardens. I cried at a picture of a wildlife reserve in Delaware, blossoms falling across a pond and sunlight streaming through the trees. By February I am so done with winter.

But here it remains. Yesterday I took the girls on their sleds up to the beach, where I pulled them along the sand. We decided to walk down to the shoreline to see the seagulls on the ice floes, and on our way, we suddenly saw a Great Blue Heron perched in front of us, right where the water washed up against the sand. As we got close, it opened its wings and took off further down the beach. We followed it and reached it again, and sat watching it for awhile. It looked strange there among the boat docks and the geese, out of place, like a creature from another world.

Again, it took off, this time disappearing from sight. We played with sticks in the water, breaking apart the chunks of ice. As we were leaving, an old woman came up from behind us. She had 2 Paris Hilton-type dogs wearing little knit coats. She asked us if we'd seen the Blue Heron.

"Yes," I said. "Wasn't it beautiful?"

She told us there were swans out further, and we could see them, their long, thin necks stretching out above the other geese. There were a few white ones and some black ones and we watched them open their big wings and fly off.

She told us she lived way up the road, and I imagined her to be like me, needing to get out, feeling cooped up. She said the Heron was probably there because by now it is usually spring.

"Really?" I said. "I don't remember that. Is it usually spring by now? I haven't lived here long." She said there were usually crocuses coming up in her flowerbeds.

I realized suddenly that I didn't mind. I was oving these long sled walks down the the beach we've taken so many of lately. A part of me didn't want the winter to end.

We walked with her a ways down the beach. She said: Well, a Heron and some swans. It's been a good day.

And I remembered that that's all it took to make a day good. A few small things, nothing big. It was nice to remember this. We've had so much ordinariness around here lately.... Kindergarten runs and trips to the grocery store and time-outs and checking email. It felt nice to remember that a good day could just be about getting out and seeing a few beautiful things, nothing more.

Still, I am anxious for those crocuses. We have bright purple ones in the backyard that, apparantly, should be up soon if the snow ever melts.