Snowing Butterflies

For those that have followed the story of Austin and Daisy from the beginning, you will remember that they were rescue beagles who came to us with plenty of issues including health. One of Daisy's issues is her vision.  Daisy is missing a tear duct in one of her eyes that may have been removed either by accident or design.  This means that her one eye is quite dry and over time it has gone blind due to its dryness.  She arrived in our house already blind in that eye.  While today we put artificial tears in her eye to make her more comfortable, she is and will remain blind in that eye for the rest of her life.  This does not faze Daisy one bit.  She sees what she wants to see when she wants to see it.  If she wants to see something more clearly or to give you the 'stink eye' because she does not approve of what you are up to, she simply cocks her head in order to focus her one good seeing eye on the object and gives it a good long stare.  Daisy's 'stink eye' brings me to my knees so thankfully she does not often do that.  She simply chooses to just see things her way.  In fact just the other day, my iPhone was a chocolate bar.  After she narrowly missed swiping it out of my hand and I tried to explain to her that it was not in fact a chocolate bar, she took another lunge in its direction remaining firm in her belief that it was in fact a chocolate bar. I remember an incident shortly after Daisy arrived in our lives that first made me aware that Daisy sees things her own way.  We lived in a farmhouse with a long laneway down to a busy highway.  The Relief Guy was sitting on our front lawn sipping a scotch on the rocks after a busy day.  Suddenly he called out to me in the house that all the cars were stopping in front of our place for some reason.  At the same time he informed me of this development, I noticed that I only had one beagle in the house...Austin.  We ran down the lane to discover Daisy standing in the middle of the road licking the solid yellow line.  In her mind it was the longest buffet she had ever seen.  It just went on and on and on.  She was glad she had gotten there first because all these people were starting to show up at her buffet.  We hauled her home and spent the next few months foiling her attempts to return to the yellow line which remained, quite firmly, a buffet in her mind.   Daisy is forever seeing things that I do not see and I have noticed that it is always in a positive light to her advantage.  At least that is what I used to think.  I now know it is to my advantage too and to the advantage of the world in general because her visions make it a much brighter place.  She sees flowers where I do not.  She sees large buffets of food where I do not.  And after a few years of this, I have realized that she sees a brightness in the world that makes her day and then my day much happier.
Daisy reminds me of my friend Camille.  Camille always sees things in such an uplifting light.  I worked with her on what many would consider to be a lost cause....saving an historical site.  No matter what was mentioned in our meetings, what impossible task was brought forth, she always responded with blinding enthusiasm.  Everything was possible.  Everything was positive. I will confess that I have big visions that often leave other people hyper-ventilating.  Not Camille! I loved her for loving them...and for having even bigger visions of the possible that usually left me hyper-ventilating. I remember showing up at one meeting after an exhausting day with politicians and funders in which nothing seemed to have gone my way.  My glasses were filthy with sweat and grime and goodness knows what else.  I had a headache and was struggling to read a document through my nasty glasses. I should tell you that I am a late comer to glasses and a reluctant wearer of them.  Computers did in my eyes in my twenties.  I am terrible at wearing glasses.  I can never seem to figure out how to keep them clean.  I find it an annoying task and have put little effort into understanding it....which is why I did not know about the magic cloth that seems to be the innate knowledge of fellow glass wearers.  Camille overheard me grumping about my dirty glasses and tossed a rather grimy looking cloth across the table at me saying 'try this'.  Dubiously I gave it a go and magically my glasses were sparkling. I could not believe it!  I may have spent the rest of the meeting expounding the wonderful qualities of this magic cloth.  I am pretty sure I ticked off my fellow Committee members by constantly changing the topic back to the magic cloth...everyone but Camille that is.  She was quite happy to spend the meeting talking about this wondrous magic cloth with me. In the end, my terrible day became a wonderful day.  I cannot clean my glasses today using my own magic cloth without thinking about Camille.  In her typical fashion she had taken a grey moment and made it a rainbow.
The other day Daisy and I decided to take a walk in the woods during a beautiful snowfall. I love snow falling in the silent woods.  I had cleaned my glasses before we left so I could enjoy this wondrous spectacle so of course Camille was on my mind.  As we walked through the snow storm, I was telling Daisy all about this wonderful friend of mine who sees beauty everywhere just like her and who has helped me to see it too quite literally with her magic cloth.
  'Look Daisy', I told her.  'I can see these absolutely gorgeous snowflakes with my sparkling clean glasses.'
'Snowflakes?' Daisy responded with some confusion.  'No, no, no...those are butterflies'.
Still struggling on learning my lessons in life, I actually tried to correct Daisy.  She turned her 'stink eye' on me and said resolutely 'Those are butterflies'.
With Daisy by my side and Camille on my mind, the two most wonderfully brilliant positive optimistic beings I have ever met, I suddenly realized they were butterflies.  Because, as they have taught me, when you have the vision to believe that anything is possible then you can believe that it would snow butterflies in Northern Alberta in December.


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