Beautiful Things

After the election my friend and I said we would share a picture with each other each day of one beautiful thing. 

The first day, all I could find was a tree with yellow leaves, and my friend, who was on vacation in Utah, sent me a picture of her hotel breakfast. I was walking

the dog around the block, and the sky was gray, and everything was misty like the world had sunk into a dark cloud. A woman was out raking leaves, and I had the suspicious feeling that she was a stranger, and maybe she was one of the people who glossed over injustice for the sake of cheaper groceries. Hi, she said, and I said, Hi, how are you? and she said, Well, not great, and I said, Me neither,

and we both let out the kind of long, relieved sigh you feel when you recognize a friend. Maybe we are going to be okay, or okay-ish. Either that, or fall into despair. The next day I saw a bald eagle flying in front of my house, 

and my friend hiked a trail in Utah, and my daughter and her friend finished crocheting a blanket, and my son climbed a mountain and watched the sun coming up, and in the picture he shared, you could see his little house down below, a patchwork of fields, the lake, the distant mountains.  

A few miles away from my neighborhood a group of men waved nazi flags and marched down the street yelling slurs and I had to turn off the news because I couldn't bear to hear anymore about the incoming administration’s cabinet picks, the sexual abusers, the criminals, the crackpots. The sun didn’t come out most days, 

but my husband set out bird seed in front of the bird camera and it caught the most amazing-looking bird, mid-flight, and later, I found a frilly white iris growing randomly near the garage. 

I don't know why everything feels different, why, at the same time, it feels the same. And how is it that every day I wake up in surprise to the brokenness and the beauty?