Living in Town

Here we are, behind the white picket fence, still hanging pictures, still shelving books, still opening boxes, still looking for the pink USB, the clock that hung in the breakfast nook, various bits and drills, things that got stowed away when we first arrived that we haven't seen since, and what we really search for is that sense of settlement that probably won't appear until the last picture is placed just so, and the book shelves have been sorted into some semblance of order and when we grow used to gazing across the street at the neighbour's pretty garden

rather than that lovely vast expanse of mountains and sky and the distant valley, stretching out into meadows and blue haze.  How lucky we are to have spent most of our married life in that environment.

And now, how lucky we are to have neighbours who come to visit and welcomed us with baking, and supply us with tomatoes and cucumbers and freshly picked carrots and beans out of their town gardens.

And how wonderful it is that Charles can get up and shower and dress and steer his cart up the road, around the corner, and arrive at the Senior's centre where they are always looking for a fourth for bridge and his social life has expanded just as wide as that lovely vast expanse of mountains and sky and distant valley.

We pick up the mail just around the corner and the library is a short stroll down the road.  A nice clear area of undeveloped parkland opens up to the benchland that rises behind us, and there are those mountains and bluffs and white clouds and  blue sky that we see now from a different direction, but they are as lovely as ever.

I look out my kitchen window into what seems like a deep forest of pine and fir, lightened by the sunlight on the leaves of nut trees and great long bamboo like shoots that slide their huge and glorious leaves through the fence into the side path that divides us.

Life doesn't always have compensations as fine and comforting as those we are enjoying in our ancient days, and so we are grateful for what each day brings, and maybe next time Charles makes a Grand Slam he will have been brave enough to have bid it!!!!