Getting up early in the morning gives me time to enjoy the most beautiful part of the day, the daybreak. Patiently enjoying the day as it passes like the sun does over the house where we are living, I am anxious to see the second most beautiful part of the day, the sunset with its air so cool, you want to sleep with your windows open and turn off all the air conditioning in the house.
Seemingly uninterested qualities of life when I was working, I dreaded getting up at the break of dawn in order to conduct my daily ritual of showering, getting dressed and facing the reality that this was just another manic day in what appeared to be a permanent episode in my life. Drudging my life over and over to carry through with the heavy chores of making ends meet and streaming through life’s trials and tribulations has finally come down to this part of my life, retirement.
Retirement did not come easy nor will it likely become a permanent structure in my life. Feeling yet young enough to keep working, I have taken a hiatus from life’s rat race to enjoy the natural beauty of life itself and all its glory. Running the treadmill every workday for the past fifty years has worn out some limbs, some joints and even some hair loss but with my focus on staying healthy. I continue to walk a few miles every day to enjoy the strength exercises of my aging muscles and bones. Sometimes the wife and I walk in the morning while other times we do so at night. On some occasions we do both to get as much fresh air possible for staying in the house is now a difficult option to deal with as a retiree launched before a television and a couch to deal with daily.
The early morning dew is always there on the green grass in the front of the house so plentiful the neighborhood lop eared rabbit comes over twice a day to chew on its stems. Sitting there and enjoying the green grass wet with morning dew makes me think of the early childhood days when grass was plentiful and animals were running free as if designed by nature to be that way. The sun, still hiding behind the tall hills some call mountains will likely warm the day up so that the ground and the air will glow to a nice ambient temperature desired by many as ideal. The weather here is not too hot and certainly not too cold. In fact, the air has been cool in both night and early morn where live can start fresh with a kick in the pants to get up out of bed and do the walk.
City living is not as much fun as country living for the sounds around you are not as pleasant as country living for they differ so much as it adds the stress of living in such a place. The city noises resemble fire engines roaring or police cruisers flying down the streets with light and siren on to awaken all that are asleep. There are no roosters to crow and no birds to sing for all you hear and see are bumper to bumper cars honking their horns and traveling down the main thoroughfares to find a way to work and make a living.
Visibility in the city is a few miles to say at best. Also missing is the fresh country air where you can take a deep breath of air and not choke on the pollutants around you. Rural living gives you a chance to see for miles and miles until the horizon ends. This city air, filled with manmade pollution forming a cloudy haze that limits your view to a couple of miles at best, is Given my druthers, I am happy where I am at because when I was young, I learned quickly that heaven is what you make it and peace is how you deal with your surroundings. Needless to say, I am in heaven or very close to it. Peace.
