blustery days

When I was a kid, I had this computer game for our old-school Apple computer called "Winnie the Pooh & the Blustery Day." The premise was that a blustery day had blown through the Hundred Acre Wood and scattered everyone's belongings all over the place. You had to follow clues to find everyone's things, then return them to their rightful owner in time for Christopher Robin's big birthday picnic at the end. It was timed, so it was very stressful (well, for an 8 year old).

This morning, as I was drinking coffee at my kitchen table, I noticed the way the wind was blowing the leaves outside the window. It was one of those indecisive winds, moving one way, then the next, without any warning. The leaves were not blowing from one side of the yard to the other. Instead, they danced in circles and swoops, controlled by the wind's finicky path. It was definitely a blustery day.

A lot of people I know seemed to have very odd, life-changing weeks this past week. One of my room mates decided that she is going to move to Hawaii next summer. My other room mate is helping her mother move this weekend. Another friend heard from a serious old flame that she hadn't spoken to in four years and it has thrown her world up in the air. Another friend confronted many of his demons and has been working them through for the first time in awhile. As for me. . . well, I've just had a very soul-searching week in terms of love gained and love lost and love found again. It was also the first really, truly cold week of the season. One morning, my windshield even had scrape-worthy frost on it.

So I'm sitting here thinking about blustery days; what they cause us to find, and what they may cause us to lose. What has this autumn wind scattered around for my friends and me? What pieces of us are lying scattered around, waiting to be found? But more importantly, should we go find them, or should we just let the blustery wind carry them away?