It was Tuesday morning and I was rushing around to get myself going in the right direction. I don’t enjoy rushing, especially in the morning.

Early morning is my time for contemplation and a good cup or two of coffee. This particular morning, I took more time than I had for that good coffee and now I was in a whirlwind of getting myself and my daughter dressed and out the door for a doctor’s appointment.

We made it to the car just as the cat rounded the corner crying. I jumped out of the car and put him in the house, getting white cat hair all over my black pants in the process.

So I drove down my dirt road dodging ruts while I tried to remove traces of the cat from my lap. Turning onto the paved road, I glanced at the clock, calculating the miles to town and the time it took to drive them. That’s when I pulled up behind the log truck moving about 20 miles an hour.

“Oh, boy,” I said to my daughter. “This is just my luck.”

As I huffed and puffed about the slowness of the truck other thoughts started firing off.

“Wish he’d speed up. It’s cloudy and humid again today. I’m tired of rain. I’d like to leave my house without getting mud on the car. The road is wet and that means if I get too close to this truck I’ll get dirty mist on my windshield.”

So it went as I inched toward town, frustrated, irritated and totally in my head replaying the “ain’t it awful” story.

And that is when it caught my eye, a flash of bright yellow in the tall weeds beside the road. There was one and then another and another and another — small butterflies — more of them than I could count.

They fluttered to life as the breeze from the truck stirred them up. That is when I also noticed the flowers. What I’d labeled weeds were in fact lots of different blooming plants.

Some were as yellow as the butterflies. There were lavender blossoms too and there was a vine covered in fiery red flowers winding its way through the brown grasses with their feathery tops.

“Look at all the butterflies,” I whispered. “There must be hundreds of them.”

They floated up as I passed, some of them flying right in front of the windshield pausing for a split second before floating back down into the flowers.

Gone was my concern about mist on my windshield. Vanished was my impatience with the slow truck. Frustration and irritation disappeared. For a moment I focused on the amazing show presented for my entertainment by these glorious butterflies.

I reached the end of the road and turned onto the main highway. The truck moved into the slow lane, but I drove behind him for a few more minutes noticing I no longer felt the overwhelming need to get around the slow vehicle. When I finally passed, I was smiling and looking for more butterflies.

Funny thing, I slowed down from the panicked rush and enjoyed the surprise butterfly ballet and I still made it to the appointment in plenty of time. So why did I almost ruin a lovely morning by thinking it into being less than lovely.

Perhaps I should spend coffee time tomorrow contemplating that and what my Tuesday morning butterfly experience taught me.