Spring in the Quiet

My house was made for this. When you open the front door and the back door, a breeze makes its way from start to finish. I recognized this as I was making a cup of tea in the kitchen, where it seemed as if a fan was blowing on me. But no, it was the good, fresh breeze coming through. It was Saturday, we were all energized by the sunshine and the fact that we were tired of binge-watching British cop shows. I grilled burgers and veggies for lunch and we ate on the back deck. Then we tackled the workshop, a dark, scary place where creatures take up residence and cardboard boxes go to hide. The boxes mate and grow in there, until they almost block the garage door and threaten to fall in on our heads. While my husband dug through his tools with our future son-in-love, planning to give him as many as he could (to get started on housekeeping)...I hauled sketchy, cob-webby Amazon containers into the light. The pile mounted higher than I feared. I know that I should have recycled them, but my bin was already overflowing and I was frankly sick of seeing these monsters take over our workspace. So I did the dastardly deed: I burned them. 

My family knows that I'm a bit of a pyromaniac, 'tis true. There's something a little too fascinating about the beautiful flames, how they take away the garbage, how they provide wonderful warmth. I have happy memories of bonfires, romantic nights, comfort against a cold winter. I was thrilled to get shed of these lumps of thick, brown cardboard. I resorted them to the blaze, jubilant as they slowly disappeared into the sky. The neighbors might not have been so tickled. One of my son's a firefighter. I'll have to ask him how to atone for these sins. 

In a very short while, we had cleaned up and rearranged the whole shop. Marcus pulled away with a trunk full of tools. Ken and Liz and I took our darling Maggie out for a spin around town (Maggie is Ken's golfcart...she lives on Magnolia Street with us, hence the "Mag..") and I must admit, I haven't enjoyed hardly anything as much as I did that ride. The air was fresh and clean (well, except for the smoke wafting from our yard), the sky was crystalline blue, there was precious little traffic, and the neighbors were all out in force in their yards...waving and cheering us on. It was a small town, old school afternoon. Our world is changing and we have no clue what that is going to mean. We have so much technology we are now slaves to it. But maybe we will pull back to the earth, to the rich sky, to the neighbors across the way... to remember what our hands were made for, to remember from whence we came and to who created us. Passover, Easter, starlight...thinking of these things.