A Thousand Times No

Today has been a good day for me, mostly due to the kindness of strangers.

Snow began falling early this morning, a half day earlier than all of yesterday’s forecasts predicted, promising to bring the region to a standstill within the next day. I stopped by Trader Joe’s on the way to work to pick up some emergency storm supplies — you know, dark chocolate with hazelnuts, that sort of thing. On my way out, the cashier let me select a rose from a bucket full of cut flowers, the fresh-faced survivors of “irregular” bouquets that couldn’t be put out for sale.

When I arrived at work, I looked for the signs I had posted yesterday in search of my lost glove:

The signs were nowhere to be seen. As I walked to the reception desk, the woman working behind the desk smiled broadly. “Look!” she cried, reaching over to an area outside the reception booth. “One of the Facilities people saw the sign, and brought your glove here.” Yesterday at the supermarket, I had bought a fancy caramel apple covered with nuts and chocolate, hoping that I would be able to give it away as a reward for the safe return of my left glove. Once again, the hidden power of chocolate had come to my rescue.

But there was something even better awaiting me when I walked upstairs to my office. Propped against my office door was a small package from Italy. Shelley of At Home In Rome, co-organizer of World Nutella Day, was sweet enough to take pity on my Euro-Nutella-craving soul and send me some of the single-serving packets shown in photos on her website. Now I am faced with the happy dilemma of deciding which occasions are “Nutella-worthy.”

Today’s events made me think of the much-repeated poem by Sheenagh Pugh:

Sometimes

Sometimes things don’t go, after all,
from bad to worse. Some years, muscadel
faces down frost; green thrives; the crops don’t fail.
Sometimes a man aims high, and all goes well.

A people sometimes will step back from war,
elect an honest man, decide they care
enough, that they can’t leave some stranger poor.
Some men become what they were born for.

Sometimes our best intentions do not go
amiss; sometimes we do as we meant to.
The sun will sometimes melt a field of sorrow
that seemed hard frozen; may it happen for you.

Even if the sun fails to melt everything that falls from the sky tonight, there’s still an upside — that would make tomorrow this winter’s first snow day.