A Righteous Neighborhood

I have lived in my far-flung country home for twenty-six years at this point.  In the mornings there, the sun itself is my nearest neighbor to the east.  To the south, as I sit at my sofa looking out my bay windows, I seen nothing but an open expanse of prairie.  Far off in the distance, the jade-colored Elkhorn Mountains climb against the sky.  Mornings there are mostly silence punctuated by the sounds of familiar birds or a breeze sifting through the pines out back.

Waking here in Medina, Ohio, is not anything like waking at home.  Here, I wake to a righteous neighborhood.  Cars hoowish by our open windows with tires thap-thapping across every cold joint in the concrete street.  The air conditioner from the house next door hums a low steady tune.  When a warm, humid breeze parts the chiffon curtains of our bedroom, a postcard perfection of neat homes and sidewalks and leafy trees appears outside.  Cars without their people rest quietly in neat rows of basketball-hoop drives.  Even early in the morning, an occasional man walking his dog or a young woman with a stroller will appear and glide right through the postcard perfection.  Unseen birds chip and wheeet from the maple immediately beyond our window.  Here, the mornings are a somewhat muted symphony of sounds punctuated by a much softer silence.  Different, but pleasant just the same.

--Mitchell Hegman