The Brown Recliner (Where I Belong)

"I felt small.  Like a vapor, like a mist.  Here today and gone tomorrow.  And now my butt was wet." 

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There's a brown recliner in my living room.  It's my chair.  At least it seems to be.  No one sits in it but me.  It's almost like that's where they want me.  Not in the loveseat by the TV and not on the couch.  They want me right there.  Next to the back door, facing the TV.  It's like, as long as I'm there, all is right with the world.

I seem to sit there a little more often these days.  When the kids were growing up, we were always running.  Running from ballgames to practices to performances to church to events at school.  Always running.

The TV sits across the room and it's on a lot.  Kelly likes to have noise in the house.  Even if she isn't watching, she likes to hear it.  I think the sound of baseball brings her comfort.  I think it reminds her of all those days we spent in the bleachers, burning up or freezing to death.  Sitting there with a knot in our stomach, always silently praying for hard line drives, hoping to find the gap, and computing batting averages in our head just hoping this game raised it a few more points.  It was fun but not like surfing fun, more like Yahtzee fun.  Hoping you win but knowing that most of the time you're just gonna have to make do with whatever roll you get.

When I sit in the recliner, where I belong, I can see out the backdoor window.  If its daylight, all I see is the patio umbrella, our cast iron patio furniture and our pink hummingbird feeder.  It used to be red but the sun has taken it's toll over the years.  Hummingbirds don't seem to mind as long as that thick, sweet, sugar water is there for the taking.

A few Sundays ago, I saw a hawk murder a dove right on my back stoop just outside that door.  Doves hang out there all the time.  They like to get under the stoop so that when you open the door they can all fly up all at once and make that whirring noise they make to try to make you wet your pants, or at least cuss a little.  But on that Sunday, one lonesome dove ventured to the top of the stoop.  I was watching football when - BOOM - something hit the window on that back door and feathers flew.  I sat up in my chair to see what the heck was going on and a hawk about the size of a Cockerpoo dog was staring right through that window at me.  When I stood up, he flew into the yard with that dove still flopping around in his talons.  Then away they both went.  Wild Kingdom right here at Cape Cottontail.

Occasionally though, at night, something almost magical happens.  Some nights, if it’s clear, even through the incessant chatter of the TV or the constant allure of my iPhone, if I happen to look outside, THERE IT IS!  Wow!  I've seen the moon a million times but sometimes, just as it’s rising, it’s spectacular!  It rises over my neighbor's house like a giant saucer of fine china.  A perfect delicate white circle.  And it's BIG.  At first it's really big and then it gets smaller as it rises.

Because it's been raining all day, tonight it was ghostly.  It was big and bright and hung right there in the sky like a galleon on the ocean with the faintest little clouds drifting in front of it.  Like a ghostly king in a flowing robe.  I got out of my recliner, stepped on the wet, wooden stoop in my bare feet, walked down the steps and plopped right down on one of the patio chairs and sat right there and stared at it.

I felt small.  Like a vapor.  Like a mist.  Here today and gone tomorrow.  And now my butt was wet.

I sat a few more minutes and then went back up the steps, across the stoop and back through the door.  Kelly looked up at me from her school work with this quizzical look on her face.  Where had I been?  What was I doing?  Was I ok?  Then, satisfied that everything checked out, without saying a word, she went right back to her homework, with baseball on the TV and I crawled back into that brown recliner, in front of the TV,  by the back door.

Back where they put me. Back where I belong.