Expectations, and Getting it Right

Expectations are difficult, if not impossible. This is what my best friend and I have concluded in the past few years. It seems difficult, if not impossible, to hope for the best and maybe anticipate a little goodness out of something or someone, without full-on expecting a certain result. And when that result does not happen close to what we've got in our minds or hearts, the bitter taste of disappointment courses through veins, telling us we got that whole hope and expecting thing wrong again.

I seem to be an expert at this hoping-too-much stuff, and that disappointment taste is a familiar, biting shot.

But I think I got it right this time.

I just weathered my first winter here in the Pacific Northwest. I wish I had a dollar for each time a person told me, "Hope you like rain!" when I informed them we were moving out here. We knew 14 months in advance, so there was plenty of time for people to say, again and again, how wet it is out here. Having gone to college out here, I had a good idea about the rain and the mindset it requires.

So I faced the winter like I would face a tough wind: I leaned into it, tasting a lot of that bad weather stuff on my face as I did, but most of it rolled off my coat (purchased at REI, of course, by my husband, so you better believe it was a high-quality one). I faced the winter again and again, usually with the cute rump of a yellow lab trotting in front of me, her tail up and happy, loving being out, not caring too much what the weather might be throwing our way that particular walk. It was still a chance to breathe fresh air, stick up a stick or two, jump up on a neighbor, pee in someone else's yard, and--wonder of all wonders--poop and have her mom pick it right up.

Honestly, I can think of only four or five walks this winter when I was truly miserable. I wore rain pants, my husband's insulated rain boots, a long rain coat, baseball cap and hood to guard against the wet. But I tried to trick myself into thinking they were fun--puddles and a puppy helped.

And suddenly, I find myself here. In April. On the other side of my first winter. My friends keep saying how rainy the winter was--the worst in recent memory. Locals keep grumbling about how bad the winter was--a man on a street corner told me it was like "that one Sigourney Weaver movie when she's taken over by aliens and it won't stop raining."

Um, huh?

Whatever this guy meant, it is Spring. And we made it.

Yesterday as our whole region smiled up at the sun, Sunny and I trotted along the sidewalk, I realized that I finally got this whole setting expectations thing right. I expected gray and dismal and tough, and any time it was not that gray or not that dismal and not that tough, I noted it. And was happy about it. A little celebration, actually. When it went back to gray and dismal and tough, I got into my lean-into-it stance. And the cycle continued--of keeping my expectations realistic and low, but being happy when the weather was better.

There's something to be learned from this. It might take me a few more winters to practice this new skill and carry it into other parts of my life besides walks with my dog. But, I plan on sticking around.