Uncluttered Openness

SITTING IN MY HIGH CHAIR, staring out the kitchen window, chowing down on my daily gerber. A refreshing pop up summer thunderstorm is in progress, sacrament of heat and humidity. Mom, puttering around, notices that my eyes are bigger than saucers, as I gaze transfixed in utter disbelief.

"What's wrong with that kid?" she says to dad, who is immersed in the morning newpaper and coffee. Mom, more nurturer than behavorial analyst. Dad, the analytical lawyer, replies sleepily:  "he's never seen it rain before, dear."

And, fifty eight years later, I can still only avert my eyes from rain with some degree of difficulty. I miss those mid summer fifteen minute showers we had routinely in the nineteen fifties and sixties; global warming has its advantages, like short sleeves in december, but I would rather float stick boats in gutter races than watch my lawn turn crispy brown every summer.

We all selected and shaped our twigs, then let 'em rip. The races sometimes lasted for two or three blocks. By that time, somebody had usually pulled away, the sun was back out, and the sandlot had dried enough to resume whiffle ball.

Forty years later my beautiful black and silver german shepherd experienced the same joy, during a jog in the woods. He stopped, transfixed, and I followed his gaze across the valley to three unwitting deer.

Wolfgang glanced at me quickly, and said "you've been holding out on me. I had no idea there was anything this cool out and about." And he streaked off in hot pursuit, which no command from me could have prevented; he was out of his head with excitement. Fast as he was, the deer were twice as fast, gone in a flash, hopping without concern over a chain link fence and bidding farewell.

I hope I live long enough to experience something like that again, either directly, or vicariously, it doesn't matter. The overwhelming joy of the uniquely mundane. Just once more I want to be a saucer eyed infant, and I want to see a beautiful fellow being experience some moment of epiphamy.

Maybe its merely a matter of waking up daily with a certain attitude of uncluttered openness.