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Sunday, March 24, 2013

Morning on My Street

I am folded into the uncomfortable loveseat with its view from our front windows. I will have a back-ache later. But I stay there to watch the morning unfold on my street. No need to have a life of my own when I can take part in the ever-changing life that unreels in front of me. Neighbours go off to the daily grind, having already had their hour-long run in the park, having come home to shower and dress and feed their families.

 

And with amazement I watch the children who have morphed overnight from the infants I remember into hulking young adults bowed by backpacks bigger than a breadbox and heavy as life's burdens. The teams of teens depart.

 

A moving truck manoeuvres past the parked cars, then returns moments later, rumbling in the other direction.

 

The newest neighbour races past, pushing her daughter's stroller ahead of her as she covers the first lap of her daily marathon of shepherding children to and from school

without a car.

 

Now a friend leaves his driveway, suited and helmeted, his bicycle picking up speed as he heads for the corner.

 

A couple younger than we are stroll by hand in hand. Is he walking her to work? Or are they both playing hookey and going off for breakfast in the park?

 

Strolling is rare at this time of day. Racing and running are more routine. The mommy and her daughter slow down to wave at me and I respond, as I do every day, by leaping to my feet from the uncomfortable loveseat and performing a pantomime of joy at seeing this six-year-old. I salute, blow kisses, and semaphore huge waves of recognition. Sometimes she keeps looking and laughing as she passes the corner of our house. Sometimes she forgets me and my antics as soon as I am out of her sight.

 

And then I sink back into the non-ergonomic loveseat, pen in hand, to knock off one more Sudoku before I begin the day.

 
 
Copyright 2013 Ann Tudor
www.anntudor.ca
http://www.scenesfromthejourney.blogspot.com

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