The Silver Lining That Takes My Breath Away: Day Twenty-One

(Sometimes it’s tough to feel at home in your own city.  Which is why I’ve given myself a challenge:  each day, for forty days, I’m going to find *one* thing I love about this place.  And then I’m going to tell you about it.  If you want to follow my journey, start here.  Today is Day Twenty-One.)

*

Every year, I love watching the leaves turn.

I grieve it when they fall.

But this loss, like every other, has a silver lining.

*

Just a week ago, when I looked out my back window, I saw our leafy beech and hundred-year oak.  A scrubby but golden-leaved maple.

Now, I can see horizon and sky.  Range after range of blue hills.  I can see all the way across the city to the white tower of the airport, where planes touch down and surge upward, over and over, all day long.

*

Tonight, I stand at my kitchen window and watch the lights wink on across the valley.

In thirty minutes, the whole city will light up and glitter — a river of light, sparkling in the dark.

And I wish I could show you a picture of this.  I do.  But there’s no lens I own that could do it justice.  And sometimes, the things you can’t capture on film are the most beautiful things of all.

So tonight you’ll just have to take my word for it when I say this:

I am grateful.

*

Barn’s burned down —

now

I can see the moon.

–Mizuta Masahide