A Day in the Sun
He was a man of almost mystic quality. As he sat writing his novel the grass and the trees swayed in the wind gently and the birds sang a sweet melody. He was smiling as he wrote now. Smiling at nature’s sounds of work and joy.
The grass he was sitting on was soft and comfortable even for him. It was easy to relax and write in this place. After all, there were scarcely any distractions whatsoever in this tranquil place. A car would come rolling by lazily every now and then or a couple would walk by him on the sidewalk, but that was all. Sometimes he would go down to the creek and write with a whole new chorus of sound around him. The wind was not as persistent today and down in the creek he could hear the running water of the diminutive stream. Every now and then a duck would float by and he would giddily write as fast as he could, describing the creature in detail. It was a writing practice he had grown accustomed to over his years of writing.
On some days, including this day, he would do more relaxing than writing. Today he had a cup of coffee next to him on top of a paper napkin and he just sat there, absorbing his surroundings with a calm elation. The wind was not present and now he listened to sounds of the insects around him busily working. He patiently watched a group of ants scuttle to his pack and the waiting turkey sandwich inside, wrapped in tin foil. As the ants got closer he moved the bag and when he was satiated with the new location, he laid down.
The soft ground always did wonders for his painful back that he had come to feel increasingly at home. There were many clouds in the sky forming all kinds of shapes. Even after his childhood he took pleasure in making figures out of them with his mind for hours on end. It allowed his imagination to run wild like a fish in an open sea. No longer did he have that kind of time. Quietly and gently he reached into his pack to retrieve a chocolate macadamia cookie. The store on North Street always had the best cookies in town and before a trip to his humble paradise he would always buy three cookies: one fore when he got there, one for lunch, and one before he left.
He paused to pick up an ant trying desperately to crawl to the cookie. He grinned and placed the adroit little thing with the rest of the ants on the ground where it belonged. His pad of paper and pencil had remained untouched except for one duck sighting thus far, and he was enjoying the small break that he could get from his otherwise arduous work. For most of his life he had worked hard to get where he was at.
Being here on the grass made up for all the pain and hardship he had suffered in his mind. Other rancorous encounters were far behind him now. Writing was what he did for a living and it suited him just fine. One look at the cookie told him that it was time for his lunch. Taking the turkey sandwich out of his bad with one hand, he took a bite out of the cookie with the other. He took a moment to close his eyes to enjoy the succulent cookie more fully-he wouldn’t have too many more days like this in his life. Life was too erratic and he had a feeling that soon he would be moving on again. That was too bad. This was a good place to be.
The turkey sandwich in his hand reminded him of his late mother who he had not appreciated until now. She showed him how to make his first turkey sandwich so many years ago. His method changed little since then-he made his sandwich exactly the way mom did it. Time to take a bite. He bit a piece out of the sandwich and chewed slowly to savor every little bit of flavor in the sandwich. Days at the shelter had taught him that.
Those days were when you could look forward to nothing but the next five minutes of the day. Anything more than that was irrational because there they were bound to die any minute. When he finished his lunch he decided that he would not be writing anything other than his animal descriptions and that was just fine. So he laid back down on the soft grass, let his muscles relax, and closed his eyes. When he woke up later he would go back home and back to reality.
