Sometimes

Somtimes, things don't go like you plan.

At the last minute, my nephew and his wife invited us over for Easter brunch on Sunday. Their son, Aiden, is a year and a half old. Last year, he just wasn't quite old enough to catch the drift. But this year, he celebrated in grand style. He got on to the baskets and hidden eggs. The Peeps and the jelly beans. The talking trucks and sunglasses. He had plenty of people to snatch him up and hold him and squeeze him.

Somtimes, you just have to go with the flow.

And so it was with my Easter smoker. I could have been attached to my vision of how the day should have gone but, I let go and followed the path of least resistance. And you know? Things worked out perfectly...just as the universe intended. A huge storm settled in and kicked up her wicked heels in a wild Fandango. Side ways, sleeting rain, thick and fat, hurtled down from the heavens like Weight Watcher devotees sliding off the wagon. Winds, 30-40 miles per hour, bobbed the trees and bushes aft and fore, pushing the cold along with its blasts. Not the perfect barbecue day that I had planned.

Sometimes, I would've gone ahead and tried to circumvent Mother Nature.

I would have pulled the Weber grill under the eaves of the house, fired up the charcoal, put on my slicker and asserted my will over the fates. But not that day. That day I practiced a surrender that is not among my natural instincts.

Sometimes, my friends have a faith in me that I don't have in myself.

Miss B sent me this e-mail on my last post, Call Her Macaroni:

"Wonderful Easter story. And I know it will carry on with another
paragraph
about...how her lovely daughter continued the barbecue tradition,
even with
horrid rain and wind with temps in the 50's. For, she is the girl who
plants
her flowers, weeds her garden and barbecues in the rain.

Sometimes even I have to wait to do what I want.

To plant my flowers, weed my garden and barbecue, rain or shine, often I have to exercise patience. But I will wait only one day. After that, I will take matters into my own hands. Yesterday I fired up that charcoal kettle. Even if I'd had to put on my hip waders, the Easter barbecue tradition was going to happen.

Sometimes, my friends and family are just the best.

No...make that always!