Tuesday, July 10, 2012

an ordinary Tuesday

There is a certain beauty in this place, in this hot northern western prairie place, with its good library and its lovers of sweet milky coffee, its sprinklers and stately tree-lined streets near campus, its tinned maple syrup and independent bookstores calling to let you know your order is in. There is a certain lushness to it at this time of year, a certain hospitality as this family and then the next invites us over for dinner later in the week. There is a certain satisfaction in occupying a tall-windowed office, terrified at the prospects and work load ahead, but also solidly satisfied by the spines of the books facing out like old friends. And home again, come evening, to sit and hear someone strumming a guitar, to have a pot of something on the stove, to watch a silly old film and then sleep between cool sheets.

This is not the screen-door-scented summer of my childhood, with its sneaky after-dark library book binges and flap of bedroom curtains, barbecue and sweet corn and salad drenched in Green Goddess dressing, but it is something good. It is its own new kind of good.

1 comment:

  1. And it is a certain kind of wonderfulness to love each place where one lives. You have that gift!

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