Window on the Morning

I sure do like it here. Who thinks up all this entertainment for us?Four hours ago the world was indigo-blue when I shot up in the bed and let out a yelp. I had dreamed a bird flew at my face, then got stuck in my hair, which Old Dave calls ‘the Net’ because all kinds of things get stuck there.He heard me yelp, dealing as he was with Chapter 20,569 in Dave’s Own Book of Insomnia. He says he just opened one eye, thought “Good ol’ TT” and went back to sleep.So four hours ago we had Alfred Hitchcock’s “The Birds" around here and now in a few minutes the sun is going to be up and spreading its unconditional love all over the place, even on the messy lawns and sidewalks ankle-deep in leaves with last night’s winds.People are glad to wake up, that’s what I think, however much they moan about having to crawl out from under those covers.We all have our rituals, the bathing, the drinking something hot, the stretching... Maybe we fire up the television and let the paid cheer of the morning news team wash over us. “They care!” we’re meant to think. "They want us to start the day informed of the latest roll-over, low pressure system, house fire!" It’s not exactly the way our mothers used to wake us but it will do.So here it is Monday of the week of heavy obligation I whined about yesterday, only rather than feeling burdened I feel content. Content and even happy to be stitched so tightly into the fabric of my community.Just now our neighbor inched up out of his driveway just like always. The newspaper whumped down onto our sidewalk at the usual time too. All over the land teachers are walking down the still-empty corridors toward their classrooms, and the lines at the drive-thrus are eight and ten deep with the eat-on-the-run types.When I get up, I make coffee and sit right down here for an hour – and now I'm remembering I told a favored friend I would find her some footage of a ginkgo tree and sure enough here is a YouTube clip of one in Anduze, France.I watched it three times before I noticed what people left as comments underneath it. Two years ago somebody wrote “That’s a beauty!!!!” Then eight months ago another person said “Ginkgo the best!” Lastly a year ago, somebody else again viewed the same footage and wrote “my cats staring at me and I’m worried cos i havent fed him, mmmmm nice tree.”I like that last one ungrammatical as it is, the way the person registers obligation and beauty. Her cat and this lovely old tree having its hair combed by the wind. The near and the far. It shows just exactly how we live.[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LyH6S1IcZJI&feature=related]

Be Glad of it All

Here’s why I’M thankful on this last day of the long giving-thanks weekend:1. I don’t have to peel anymore slimy flesh off a turkey. The soup's all made and I'm done sifting through gunk to find the tiny bones.2. I’ve decided I’m not going to even TRY doing the dreaded Holiday Card until January since I have new book just published and it'll be all I can do to get the word out about that.3. The book is an audio book so I didn’t have to annoy the socks off my whole family by asking them to read it for errors. I just closed myself up in a back bedroom with some fancy sound equipment last summer and let fly – and amazingly enough it doesn’t seem to embarrass me to listen to it because my old pal Roger Baker out in Albuquerque not only took out all the swallows and lisps and hiccups but also added original music between the ‘cuts’ so it’s all pretty and nice.4. I can actually SORT OF of swing a golf club even though my spine is twisting up like a contortionist with this secret scoliosis I didn’t even know I had, never mind a neck with so much joint-degeneration in it the guy doing the X-rays in at Mass General in October said, “Wo! Whadja, fall out of a tree or something?” I’m taking these lessons and my head hasn’t fallen: amazing.5. I’m not sure but I THINK I’m getting to be less of a workaholic. The whole neck problem comes from being such a wonk all my life, actually hand-writing term papers in fancy Old English script in high school, taking notes on my notes all through college, bringing entire pieces of furniture on ski vacations to strip and refinish them. (Picture it ! Whole SETS of chairs! Entire bureaus!) Last night before supper I was able to spend a whole hour locked in a locked closet with my four-year-old grandson without once feeling like Patty Hearst or panicking about all the emails I wasn’t answering. A little later I asked him if he wanted to hear the world’s greatest tenors and put on a CD which I had thought was Luciano Pavarotti and Placido Domingo but which turned out to be the soundtrack to the Kenneth Branagh movie of Hamlet. “Where’s all the singing?” I said after we'd listened for a good two minutes. “Shhhh! TT” whispered my little friend, putting his finger to his lips. “This is just the part where the curtain is going up!” I liked that. I really liked that, because it reminded me to feel thankful AND glad AND lucky that...6.Yet again this morning whatever shape we find ourselves in, that big old curtain went up for us all.