Friday Morning in the Village

When I think of good places, I think of the mornings there.  I'm not a morning person, so those days that I rise early and see places for what they are then without a pre-caffeine stupor are moments I remember clearly.  I remember a morning in Nice, walking the streets as the cafes were just opening on my way to a flea market.  The city was just waking up, people were going through their rituals, saying their greetings, just before things had really started that day.  It was a good morning.  I remember multiple mornings driving down the roads of Messinia in a Nissan Micra, a plastic cup of poorly diffused instant coffee sloshed next to me, the mist rising out of the olive groves, no one speaking, thoughts about the day wrapping around us.  Those mornings were beautifully painful.  They always started the same way, gut wrenching scenery, sleepy villages, old men and their prayer beads, really bad coffee, and thoughts.

We're three months into the German assignment.  I'm pretty sure it's the mornings I will recall with the most fondness when I look back 10, 20, 30 years from now.  A cup of perfect coffee sitting next to me, still.  The birdsong from the bush of sparrows outside the office.  Crisp, blue white skies and soft morning breezes.  A freighter with a German or Dutch flag chugging through the lock.  Swans flapping their massive wings against the water in takeoff sounding like the whomp-whomp of rotor blades.  Geese having a loud discussion of the day's territory. The next door neighbor going through her morning routine.  Tuesdays are cleaning day, Thursdays are for the garden, Fridays all the windows get opened.  There's a smell in the morning, an odd earthy, spicy odor coming off the river.  I wait until the afternoons after that's lifted to open my windows, but to each their own.

Joggers go by, singles and pairs.  When the sun is first coming up, it's the bike commuters who zip along, the sounds of clicking ball bearings and creaky chains telling the beginning of the day.  Dog walkers shuffle along the path beside the road, quietly.  Neither the dogs nor their owners seem particularly awake.  The village cats skitter through flower beds and along garden walls headed to wherever the schedule dictates.  Folks pass each other in the alley next to the house carrying eggs from the lady one block over who sells them from her front door.  Others carry fresh, still warm Brötchen from the bakery.  They all nod and say "Morgen!"  Some stop for a chat.  The cyclists that pass now are of the recreational sort, at the beginning of their rides, stretching the legs, smiles on their faces, and sun in their eyes.

Dew drips off grass blades and budding leaves.  The church bells ring in response to the ones tolling on the opposite riverbank.  Engines kick on and car doors slam.  Skateboards pass on the way to school.  The sun rises higher, the sky gets bluer.  I'm on the doorstep with a second cup of coffee, waiting for a package of...more coffee.  Sparrows pick at the grass between the bricks in the courtyard.  Two bikes rest against the garden wall, patiently waiting for a ride.  Laughter from somewhere around the corner.  A dog barking in the park.  Shadows getting shorter.  Sun warms orange tiled roofs.

Mornings aren't lost on me, the incurable night owl.  They're the time of promise, before the day has committed itself, while it's still an open book.  Here they're a perfect quiet peace.  They bring a smile, always, three months down the road.  As the day ripens, it goes in different directions, sometimes great, sometimes not so.  But, the mornings?

They always start out good and simple.  Life right now makes perfect sense.