The windows are open. It’s cool enough, for a few months maybe, to let the wind come tour our home at night. I hear it more than see it. The rushing through the trees, leaves rubbing each other as they hold tight to the trees they just formed on. Wind whistling through open cracks in the fences, chairs, random toys around the yard.
But mostly, I hear the windchimes. I love windchimes. It may be strange, that I love them because I normally can’t stand soft little noises; people chewing, a whistling speech, a hidden Rubiks cube behind a desk, or one of those silly motors we got at the science center whirring, whirring, whirring…..ak!
Wind chimes hold a special place in my heart. I am instantly taken back to my grandmother’s house on an early Saturday morning. I spent the night in my aunt’s big (at the time) bed with her dog Penny pushing me off all night. Penny was a tiny dog with very strong, pointed legs, who thought she needed the bed to herself.
The kitchen always smelt like homemade toast. Dangerously hard, thin crust and crisp cloud like centers. No one made toast like Grandma. There was never a shortage of butter at her house either. Lots of jam on buttery toast.
The floor was always cold tile, even in the summer, that pushed me up on the couch with a handmade afghan. Saturday Morning cartoons and then into the backyard to climb the amazing mulberry trees. If I was lucky, there were cherry tomatoes ripening in Grandpa’s garden that I could sneak. He said not to eat them, but there was a slight smile that told me he would have done the same thing. I think that man had 2 green thumbs.
I’ve been thinking a lot about wind, air, breathing, a lot lately. I’ve always loved wind. Maybe that comes from my childhood in a windy small town, or maybe it comes from the windchimes. The wind has always felt cleansing for me. I am the one that will go out in the wind as a tornado approaches, just to feel my hair whip around and threaten to tie itself in knots. Test the limits, live on the edge, be a part of something.
Winds of change. Last breaths. Gasping for breath. The wind beneath my wings. Just breathe. Every breath you take. Wind is air. Air fills the voids. We can’t see it, but we can feel it. It carries life and can cause death. Everywhere it goes it pushes, but we pull it in. Give it enough time and wind can shape a mountain.
Sometimes it seems we are just feathers, being blown about it a storm, pushed and pulled by every turn of the wind. It can be hard to stand still, go our own way, make a stand. But maybe, it’s turning into the wind, facing it, letting it blow away our insecurities, doubts, fears, and past mistakes, that makes the journey just a little more bearable. Maybe, that is where the music of life comes from. I don’t know, I just know I need to go outside and be in this wind.
Cause I said so.
Photo credit: wallpapercraft
