My favourite view

One of the things I truly love about my home is the front patio-style window that faces out of the front of the house onto the street. We are fortunate to live in a neighbourhood that is old enough to have some mature trees on it and tends to be rather quiet in the morning.  It is the view from this window that comes to my mind whenever I am away on a trip and I think of home. 

I think of my wife sitting on the loveseat in front of the window every morning, curled up under a blanket, drinking coffee and reading her Bible.  Our grey and white cat is typically stretched out on her lap and our little black dog is sleeping beside her, rolled up in a little dark ball.  When I am overseas and missing Denita, it is this picture that I see.

Outside, black squirrels run around or jump from branch to branch, performing acrobatic feats that never cease to amaze me.  We have one squirrel across the road who seems determined to have the biggest and most elaborate nest in the neighbourhood.  We have witnessing him dragging entire pieces of newspapers and oversized plastic sheets up to his nest which easily exceeds any other nest on the street.

Across the street, lives a Tamil family from Sri Lanka.  Every morning, the grandfather goes out, dressed in his traditional garb, and has a cigarette.  Sometimes, he sits on the chair by the door but usually he stands out in front of the house, puffing away, hardly inhaling. I can tell that he enjoys it, which is probably why I like watching him smoke.  Or perhaps it is because it is because he is entirely predictable.  Every morning, only one cigarette, and dressed in the same clothes. At this time in my life when things are so unpredictable, I tend to gravitate towards things I can count on.  Regardless of why I enjoy watching him, I would be rather disappointed if he ever quit smoking.

Another constant in my universe is the tree in our front yard that I see every morning. It is a rather lazy tree. In our neighbourhood, it is the last tree in the spring to get its leaves and the first in the fall to drop them.  No idea why it acts this way, but every year it is the same. Endearing, annoying and entirely predictable. 

It's these little things that add colour to our life.  They are the things that make us long for home when away and make us glad to be home when we wish we were away. Over my life, I have seen many things in many countries.  But my favourite view is still the view from my front window.