The Thing about a Backyard Fountain
“Tell me if I should pour your coffee or not.”
“Yes, I’d like for you to pour my coffee,” I said.
“I’m happy to. It’s just that this is much earlier than you’re normally up, and I don’t know if this is a soft start or the real thing.”
“It’s a soft start that I’d like to enjoy with a cup of coffee.”
And just like that, a cup of coffee appears, complete with a splash of coconut creamer and a few extra seconds in the microwave to bring it all back to optimal temperature. The man knows what he’s doing.
I sat and read the newspaper, for crying out loud. I sat in the corner of the living room, in the corner of the couch, because the only thing better than the corner is a corner inside a corner. I’m a corner gal. (I even love the corner pieces from the brownie pan.) And I read the newspaper, the weekly edition of our neighborhood herald, complete with a review of a play about people who pay to have their books appropriately damaged so they look like they’ve been read. Which is a play you can bet I’d love to see, if it hadn’t closed last night.
(I’m behind on the weekly neighborhood herald.)
Anyway, I read the herald, and then a cooking magazine, and then I spent a luxurious hour with the newest novel by Marisa de los Santos, and the sunshine was spilling across the pages and my lap, and the birds were singing their morning song, and all of a sudden it was all too glorious to miss by going back to sleep.
One of my backyard neighbors has a fountain that sounds like a babbling brook, and it’s pretty much the icing on the Sunday morning cake.
Thank you, neighbors with the fountain.
I’m sorry I don’t know you well enough to thank you.
But I’m sending my gratitude on the breeze, and that will have to do.
Anyway, I suspect that someone who is thoughtful enough and aesthetically minded enough to have a suburban fountain just for the bliss of its sound, is perhaps a person who prefers silent gratitude anyway. That’s the thing about a backyard fountain.
Peter said, “Let me know what you’d like to do today.”
“This. This is all I want to do.”
***
p. s. I miss you. I’m writing books up on books these days, and you know how that goes. I kind of break up with the blog, which is stupid since it’s my first love. All my writing mojo gets channeled to the books, and then I get so behind in talking to you that nothing feels right as my entry back in. It’s like when you see your best friend from college and you end up talking about the weather, since there’s no way to cover the magnitude of the last eighteen years you want to tell her about. It’s kind of like that. (My mind is a busy place.)
p. p. s. Speaking of books upon books, there is one secret project that’s been in the works for more than a year now, and it’s finally close enough to its release date that I can finally tell you about it. Stay tuned, my friends. It’s awesome in every way, on every scale.
Happy Sunday morning.
Hilly says:
You haven’t broken up with us, we’re right here! Write on writer❤️