Out My Morning Window

6/3/2015

The Lay of the Land

By Lyn Messsersmith

Out My Morning Window

               We’re all settled in now. The dogs have been out and come back in, taking their usual detour through the kitchen, interrupting my coffee building routine to get their treats. Molly, the elder of our menagerie, had her arthritis pills, followed by a milk bone, while Maggie came back for seconds on the milk bone deal. I swear they both know how to count. Today, Molly asked for her breakfast bowl early; she must have worked up an appetite chasing something in her doggy dreams.

               Maggie by passed her dish, knowing it’ll be graced with a drizzle of bacon grease if she’s patient, and headed off to join Bruce for another forty winks. Molly and I retired to the sun room, where she always flops down on the rug in front of my chair.

               Not much of our meadow is visible this morning. A welcome three day drizzle has ended, but fog waits at the edge of the yard, as if pausing to decide what to do about the day ahead.

               Taffy is perched in her normal spot, a corner fence post next to the meadow. She lives up to her name, from where I sit, all taffy colored, except for the dark tail curled under her haunches. With her eyes focused on the tall grasses in front of her, mind on the possibility of a mouse or gopher, she’s already decided what to do about the new day. She gets up, arches herback and stretches, turns a dark brown gaze toward the bird feeder, but no breakfast has appeared there either. That’s ok, she will wait.

               My coffee has cooled, so I refill it and sit again, to contemplate these quiet morning routines of retirement, which are kind of new for me. There were years of morning rush; packing school lunches while frying bacon, waiting to start pancakes until my husband, son, or a hired man came in from milking. Some of those mornings began long before daylight, saddling up under the barn lights and riding out just as the east began to turn pale. There was no time to contemplate the days that sprang at me out of a sound sleep, caught me in a whirlwind and dropped me, exhausted, into bed, already half asleep.

               Not being a morning person by nature, I don’t miss the hustle and hurry, or not having time to decide what to do about the day, but I regret not realizing at the time, that it wouldn’t always be this way. Yet, in a sense it is. Others are continuing a lifestyle that I inherited and passed on.

               Pheasants are gathering now, chasing away the red wings that think they own the driveway. Last week we saw an oriole, and a western bluebird. They’ve evidently moved on, but no surprise; that’s the way of things around here,

               The wind is picking up now, as it generally does shortly after sunup, reminding me that the years pick up too, as we advance. I haven’t decided yet, what to do about this day; this segment of life I have landed in, but I know that not a lot of it will be my choice, so I choose to be here, now, knowing that this too will pass without my permission. If someday my early morning window looks from an assisted living facility or nursing home, I hope there’ll be a bunny or bird to watch, and that I’ll decide to be grateful for the day. Here and now, it’s an ordinary morning and we’re all settled in.