Kairos Time

It was nearing the end of October and I was getting the winter blahs. Because the fall season seemed to last longer this year than other years, it was even more difficult to accept the fact that we would soon be enveloped in snow and ice. Those of you who have experienced winters in Manitoba know what I mean!

To top it all off, my husband Hardy had just been diagnosed with a mysterious illness called cold agglutinin disease. This is an autoimmune reaction to cold temperatures in which the blood's antibodies begin to destroy red blood cells, causing anemia. Although
we lived in the tropics many years, Hardy loves to go outside in winter and actually enjoys shoveling snow. The doctor's advice: go south for the winter and absolutely no snow shoveling!

That created a spark of joy in me, but it didn't last long. Hardy was reluctant to accept
this advice; he couldn't entertain the idea of someone else doing the snow shoveling.
How could we afford to go south every winter and  pay someone to shovel our snow?!
I concluded glumly that I would end up doing the snow shoveling and Hardy would stay indoors, something neither of us would enjoy very much.

Reflecting on the implications of all of this at breakfast that morning, I glanced out the window of our kitchen and from the corner of my eye I saw something bright blue against our drab grey fence. It was a surprise I had not anticipated.
(Several years ago I had purchased a small plant called monkshood and placed it against the fence in our back yard. It grew tall and spindly but never bloomed. I wondered if perhaps I had planted it in the wrong spot. Maybe it needed sun all day long instead of just in the morning.)

Now, after all this time, at the end of October, it was blooming! I couldn't believe my eyes and ran outside to verify what I thought I had seen. Not only was the monkshood in bloom, it also had buds on some of its other branches. How could a plant begin blossoming this late in the season? I thought this was unheard of, so I googled it. I learned that monkshood usually blooms in September. Since this plant had never yet flowered, and since it did so now in late fall, I considered it to be a small miracle sent to cheer me up at a time when I needed it!

On the top right of the photo you can see the yellow leaves of our maple tree, 

proving that this is indeed late autumn.

On the lower left you can see a few more flowers and the lower right shows some buds forming.

A blogger friend, with whom I shared this experience, called it a happening in "kairos time" instead of in "chronos time." (The ancient Greeks had two words for time, chronos and kairos. While the former refers to chronological or sequential time, the latter signifies a time lapse, a moment of indeterminate time in which everything happens.)

We are now into November and all the flowers have gone, except the monkshood. It is a reminder to me that even at the bleakest moments in my life there is hope, if only I allow myself to see it and grasp it.

PS:  I almost forgot to mention that I also learned that monkshood is a very poisonous plant ... !