Morning Air

He is a creature of habit.  You can set your clock to his routine.  After getting his first cup of coffee, he heads directly outside.  The outside temperature has no relevance and is never a deterrent.  On a clear day, he’ll often sit on the patio.  If it's raining, he’ll sit on the porch.  All that matters to him is being outside in the morning air.  His retreat.  His connection to nature.  

He drinks his coffee in silent communion as he looks around.  I often wonder what goes through his head those first several minutes of sanctuary.  Raised on a farm and an avid hunter, the ambient noises that may go unnoticed to most people are intrinsic measures of his inner assemblage.  He wouldn’t -- doesn’t -- miss a thing, not a sound, however imperceptible.  As one of the most observant people I’ve ever known, it is a subconscious inventory of his surroundings, whenever, wherever, whatever he is doing.   

After the first several minutes of meditation, he begins checking the stock market on his phone. Clockwork.  I’ll see him look up now and then and off into the distance.  I can almost watch his cog wheels turning.  Deep in thought, his mental gymnastics provide new and revised blueprints for his plans, his goals…the days and weeks ahead…the next chapter.  Methodical and practical -- relentlessly predictable -- he lives and breathes black and white.  Unlike his wife ...

...the restless happy dreamer.

He knows it.  I know it.  We have even argued over it -- way too many times.

They say opposites attract.  

But they also say it's not how incompatible you are, it's how you deal with that incompatibility.  

But we seem to have found our common venue.  The morning air... where all our differences seem to dissipate into the mist.  

All things are made new again.