This morning it was 37 when we got on our bikes to ride out the road, but it was so beautiful– all sunshine and blue and green- the rain of the last few days has made the whole world leafy, and it smells like new cut grass, wood smoke, and at the hooligan pits at 4 mile, fermenting fish. We looped through the Fort, and saw my sister’s car down by the beach and figured she was swimming (she does that– dips in Portage Cove year ’round. Me? Never.)
Yesterday at the pool, all fourteen early swimmers were female. When I said so to Jacque, she commented that her husband was a little like her mother-in-law when it came to water– the only kind she likes ” Is in the shower or her bourbon.” That’s a great line for an obituary. Which this is not, although since I’m flying to New York to see my dad and my other sister today, and will be gone for a week, I am thinking of my own mortality, because, well, that’s what I do when I fly anywhere, and I’m already homesick.
But what I wanted to say is that after we saw my sister’s car, we saw our daughter Sarah running on the track with her bloodhound, and Gary from the school walking his beagle, and out by Southeast Roadbuilders Vince and Jansy pedaled by too– coming in as we were going out so she wouldn’t be late for teaching school– and then in the old pond at 11-mile there were two swans and two moose, and then, if that wasn’t enough good luck and joy for one morning, when we returned to town there was Lexie and her dog jogging by the school , and she turned and gave us a big smile and said, “Hi you two” –and I thought, what a good day to be on earth, in this place where so much happens before eight o’clock on a Tuesday morning in May.