Take Advantage of These Days While You Can

I take in a deep breath of afternoon air and feel the loose wisps of hair flutter across my face. Winter has finally subsided and it feels so good to be outside – just my book and me.

“I should really get a chair out here,” I think to myself as I position my weight to the left now that the right side has gone thoroughly numb. The small patch of grass outside my patio door doesn’t offer much cushion, but I like the way it feels on my fingertips as I unconsciously touch the few green, but mostly brown, strands. Spring will color the brown blades and soon they’ll match their green neighbors.

“Nice day out, isn’t it?” a voice from my right says. I look up and standing a few feet away is an old woman. I hadn’t heard her coming down the walk, but it doesn’t surprise me, as each step she took was executed with the utmost care. From behind the veil of my sunglasses I take her in. She’s wearing purple pants and a flowery top to match the new feel of the spring air that’s come in the last week. Her hair is pure shirt and cut short and curls around her ears and the frames of her glasses.

“Oh, I know,” I say. “The breeze has picked up a bit so it’s starting to feel a little chilly, but I just can’t force myself to go back inside yet.”

She smiles and nods her head.

“Yes,” she says exhaling a deep breath as her eyes scan the sky for a few moments. “You have to take advantage of these days while you can.”

Spoken like a true South Dakotan. For all we knew it could snow tomorrow and be 70 degrees the following day. Flip a coin.

A man talking on a cellphone emerges from behind her — her son perhaps. He aids her the rest of the way and into the backseat of a silver sedan. After the purr of the engine disappears down the drive I return my eyes to my newest adventure waiting for me in my left hand.

Her words reverberate in my head and tangle in the sentence I’m trying to read.

Take advantage of these days while you can.

I look up to where she had been standing before and replay the scene that occurred only a few moments ago. I realize then that she wasn’t just talking about the weather. In her old age, her days might be numbered. If I had missed this day, I would assume another might roll around soon. I’d catch the next one and, theoretically, have years to catch even more.

But as I recalled the answer of the woman in the purple pants and remembered her face when looked across the sky, I began to wonder what she might have been thinking about when she spoke those words. Perhaps the day reminded her of a similar day she had experienced years ago. She might have seen space filled with memories.

I lifted my head up and removed my sunglasses from my eyes. Squinting, I take in the span of blue with interruptions of white. I see things for the future, things I want for myself, and things I need to do to get there so one day when I’m old, and possibly brave enough to be seen in public donning a pair of purple pants, maybe I’ll be blessed enough to see those things as memories rather than longings.

Take advantage of these days while you can.

I can, and so I will.