You Don't Know What Ya Got Til It's Gone

-to quote an old country song.

This year I'm going savor and celebrate every season that comes. I'm going to spend much of the spring outside. I'm going to relish the hot summer. I'm gonna play in the fall leaves. I'm gonna pray for snow.

I'm going to grow daffodils in a pot.

This is my last Arkansas year. Within the past few years I've come to realize how much I love Arkansas. I complain about the hot summers that draw out the sweat from your face the moment you step out of doors. I stay inside a lot doing indoor things. I rarely hike or walk or bike around these parts. But this year, I'm going to.

Because next year, I won't be here. Next year I won't have a beautiful spring where the air is just perfect and skirts blow around your bare legs in the wind and birds wake you up in the morning. Next year I won't have a three month long heat spell--and the little heat I do get will be sans air conditioner. I don't know if daffodils grow along the roads in Scotland.

Even if they do, it won't be like here. It won't be an Arkansas year. Arkansas will be a memory, no more than "A small state to the east of Texas." No one will know where I'm from. No one will know how beautiful Arkansas is in the Spring. It will only be a memory for me. Arkansas will be replaced with a different kind of beauty, that of the greenness of Scotland, the crispness, the freshness.

So this year I'm going to celebrate Arkansas, as every season here will be the last of its kind for me.