Sighing

Today.

The first truly peaceful day in over seven months.

Life's trivials and crucials had jammed up into a funnel neck of time here in our little world and we've spent the past weeks and weeks stamping and shoving them through the tiny space of half a year, one by one, two by two, too many by too many.

I no longer have a thousand things to mentally and physically sort through and accomplish, only about a hundred remain. Thus the peace. And the space to breathe once again.

Quiet. Stillness.

Our neighborhood keeps to itself this morning allowing us to hear the silence, observe the gently swaying pines and maples back-dropped by a slightly cooler, cloudless sky.

Deep draughts of air repeatedly travel to the lowest, widest stretches of my lungs filling them with freshness.

The clock's ticking is audible again as are the dog's toenails on the floor.

The bathroom door in the hall is inhaling and exhaling, opening eight inches then closing with the late summer breezes pressing in and out of the house's open windows. I notice this, hear it, become calm from the tapping sounds it makes.

Lying on the couch I watch a chestnut colored hair from my head spring up and down and up and down in rhythm with the air entering and exiting my nostrils. Up. Down. Up. Down.

I smile.

Cassie and Caroline are more graceful, moving fluidly rather than in jerks and hurried dashes. Me, too.

The cat pads softly up to my ankles and rubs in arcs around and around....because I am standing.......still.

"Nature never hurries and yet all is accomplished."