Delighting

Mushrooms mottle my front yard and I’m enamored.

They are tiny white flags reminding me of the rush of rain that greened my withered grass. They are welcome.

Each morning I can choose what I notice: rainclouds or red leaves, mud or mushrooms. Today I’m determined to notice the tiny delights–like these mushrooms–along my morning run. Why miss the pleasures God so literally plants on my path? I embark on a hunt.

My running shoes press into the limestone, newly swollen and soft from the rains, as I look for my next clue. I pass a jeering blue jay and am entertained by both his taunt and his tint. I observe a duck couple dating on the marsh’s pond and the striking red leaves of a sumac in the brush beside.

I pass a bright blue house with a pale yellow door and smile at the Swedishness of it. A wildflower waves from between the cracks in the sidewalk under my feet, and an old man decked in neon green trots by with a grin which I return. And grin again, thinking of the neon.

A parade of school buses pass and I am grateful for school, even if my high schooler doesn’t always agree. I round a bend and trade hellos with two friends while a white egret stands poised in the pond nearby, motionless while hunting for breakfast. Patience personified.

I hear the haunting call of a flute from a man playing at a picnic table, and I smell the damp leaves on the ground around him. A golden retriever jumps at me as I run past, forsaking his embarrassed owner, whom I reassure with a smile. I have a dog too, I say.

On my way back, coyotes howl for their breakfast in a nearby zoo where pumpkins wait in piles for picking. I spy a man ahead on the path swinging his satchel at the ground, and I’m puzzled until I get close enough to see the dark hump of the turtle he’s gently nudging to safety. Go, turtle, go, I cheer.

Back in my neighborhood, I notice a house hosting a family of scarecrows, stick arms and legs flopped awkwardly over the front hedge. The playground across the street matches the red maples marching by, and a man sprints down the sidewalk after his frisky spaniel pup.

And then I’m back home to my mushrooms. I crouch down with my camera, waving hello to my neighbor girl with a bow in her hair and a giant backpack on her back. Like the turtle, I think.

God surrounds me with so much to delight in, yet most of it I miss. I don’t want to miss the details of this day that He has made.

Welcome, mushrooms.