1. an aptitude for making desirable discoveries by accident.
2. good fortune; luck
While I'm not sure that the desirable discovery of today was because of my 'aptitude for making it happen', I definitely consider it my good fortune to have lucked into it!
It's a rainy Tuesday. Very rainy. So rainy that the tiny dry steam running through our front yard became a raging rapids mid-day. I swear, I saw white water out my front door!
Anyway, on this very rainy Tuesday, Mom had an appointment with the hairdresser. It always rains on her 'hairdo day', so it came as no surprise that we would have to trudge through the muck and muddle our way out and about. Making the drive down the mountain and into Fort Payne is where the 'desirable discovery' occurred. I saw it out of the corner of my eye as we passed, and I gasped in amazement, but said nothing as we were late, as usual, for our appointment. And - I had a plan. A plan to give Mom an experience I knew would delight and amuse her. (Not so easy to do these days, I'm afraid!)
Leaving the hairdresser, I casually asked Mom if she'd like some hot chocolate and a cookie as a mid-afternoon snack. One who loves food - especially sweets - she, of course was thrilled at my suggestion. So off to the McDonald's drive-through (if you've not tried their hot chocolate, you must. Even the non-fat-milk-no-whipped-cream version that I choose is muy delicioso!) we went.
Two hot chocolates and three cookies in our grasp, I drove to the parking lot of a small local strip mall and went to the far end of the paved area, stopping the car at the guard rail facing the street below. And there it was.
Across the busy street, straight ahead of us, was a tall wall of layered stone, reaching almost to the sky, it seemed. It's there every day, of course, beautiful in Spring with fresh greenery and an Autumn glory of red and yellow. But today it had been transformed into something I'd not known it to be before - a breathtaking, majestic, awe-inspiring waterfall! From the tip-top of that wall of stone, all the way to the street below, a river was dancing down the rocky shear, as beautiful as any of the falls frequented by tourists to the area year-round. Right in the middle of town! It was marvelous!
As we sat in silence, sipping our hot chocolate and savoring our cookies, we celebrated the beauty of our life here in this land of defined seasons and varied elevations - and we celebrated serendipity!
