First Hour

It's a beautiful Saturday morning. I wake up and greet the day, and Jay. We had a coffee-pot malfunction / explosion, so I decide to walk up to the Avenue to get coffee from Infusion. The day is still young, but I can already feel the heat and humidity rising; I can almost feel the heat in the sidewalk through my black flip-flops. I look down at the pavement and admire it for a moment. I think to myself how resilient it is; how not too long ago it was under 3 feet of snow, and now it is absorbing summer city heat. I feel grateful for the sidewalk and wish it well. "Hang in there today, it's gonna be a hot one".

I get to Infusion and order an ice coffee. The woman behind me asks, "what size?" I hate that question. It's a perfectly legitimate question, but sometimes it's hard enough to decide what to order let alone what size. When did sizes start, anyway? What ever happened to a standard cup of coffee? I digress. Anyway, indecision fills my mind, "do I go for a small? do I really need a large?" And like always, I go for the middle and order the medium. I grab a copy of the local paper, the Mt. Airy Independent, and decide to sit out on the Avenue and absorb the scene. I sit on the glider bench outside of Scoop and the Video Library and sip and glide and read and watch the morning unfold on Germantown Ave. I am always walking to and fro on this stretch of road, but rarely do I just sit and sip and glide and watch, so I feel happy, peaceful, grateful.

I head home, admiring the gardens and adorable tiny parcels of land that some people have as yards. I run into a neighbor, we chat briefly and wish each other a great weekend. I walk up the steps to my house and sit on the front porch and soak in our own little front yard oasis. Despite the cars and buses, all I hear are the birds chirping and the wind chime blowing in the breeze. I look at the garden and think of the snowman that stood there a few months ago, and how the garden was buried under heavy ice and snow. Like the pavement, I feel impressed by the resiliency of nature. It always regenerates; it always comes back.

I smile and think of myself, because like the garden, I am resilient. Not too long ago, I was buried under a different type of heaviness, and at times felt frozen and like my Spring would never come. Now I feel liberated and free and happy, and me. I feel grateful for the coffee and the sun and the breeze and the glider swing and the paper and the pavement and the snowman and all things that have lead to this moment.

And this was the first hour of my day. Not bad for a first hour. And something tells me it's just gonna get better from here...