One Saturday in Springtime

Today has been a day of near perfect leisure, just what a Saturday ought to be. I woke around eight o’clock to sunshine and a sense that it was a chilly day outside. Mike was still sleeping soundly so I took advantage of the quiet solitude to pray, and then picked up a project that I had put aside last evening. I did the dishes and started a nice breakfast of turkey sausage links, cheese eggs, and drop biscuits. My plan was to wake Mike with the smell of coffee, but Philo woke him first by leaping upon the bed and beginning his “Kitty 500″ routine (leap, scramble, run in circles, repeat).

After breakfast Mike wanted to work on the computer while I continued stitching, so I finished the current netflix movie, The Mill on the Floss based on the novel by George Eliot. (I enjoyed the film, despite a slow beginning. The novel was written in the mid 1800’s and is rather a tragic story of a family’s financial ruin and an ill-fated romance, with very interesting themes and characters. It did make me interested in reading the book.)

Midday we decided to go for a walk, and enjoy the fresh spring air and bright sunshine. The daffodils and forsythia are out everywhere, dotting the landscape with yellow. We stopped in Baederwood Park, swung on the swing sets like children, and admired the cloudless, deep azure blue sky above. We walked a little further over to the big hill across from our apartments and just laid down on the hillside to talk and continue staring at the sky. It was such a peaceful afternoon.

We haven’t shared here the official news that we did finally decide on Mike’s accepting the offer at Villanova. We are both settling into the realization that Philadelphia will continue to be home for us throughout Mike’s doctoral studies. In addtion to the gratitude and relief and excitement that we are feeling, I think we both feel keenly that wonderful sense of possibility. My father recently asked me if we are looking around Philly with new eyes, and I think we are. Perhaps it is the spring weather and everything slowly awakening to new life. In any case, I am truly glad that we can put down some more solid roots here for the next season of life.

We are on our way out to a special dinner to mark and celebrate this decision. Something I love about Mike is his appreciation for ritual and memory. He recalled recently that it was April of 2005 when we journeyed to Philadelphia to look for housing and decide if we would move here to finish our last year at Westminster. We stopped for dinner one night on that trip at an Outback Steakhouse restaurant to talk things over. I remember our sense of excitment and adventure as we looked around, thinking, “what would it be like to live here?”. We have not returned to that restaurant in three years, and Mike thought it might be fitting to go back there tonight and make a memory of what it was for us to stand on the threshold of his Villanova years. And so we shall, putting up a little stone of rememberance to God’s goodness and kindness to us in the year 2008.