A Small Disappointment

January 6th, 2007. Temperatures in the high 60s. It's a record for this time of the year, the radio says, and still the people out on the streets wearing their sweatshirts and their light coats, having learnt not to trust the weather, knowing well her fickle ways.

Only the squirrels are deceived. I watch them gambolling in the trees, calling out to each other from the high branches. Lacking calendars, it does not occur them to doubt that Spring is here, to suspect nature of playing tricks on them. They scamper chuckling up the tree trunks, grateful to have made it through another winter.

What will they think, I wonder, when the mercury sinks tomorrow, when the snow eventually comes? How confused they will be, how bewildered. How much they will regret the energy they have spent on this false reprieve, not realising that there may still be bitter days to live through.

I must learn not to think of the squirrels. Of their quiet tragedies, their handfuls of despair. Of these small disappointments that the margins of our lives are filled by.