HALCYON

 This is not the post I was going to write.   I was planning a different one.  I took notes and everything, last night as I waited to go on for our Fidelio performance. I should know better.  I should know that if I'm planning far enough ahead to make notes, then I am certainly going to have a change of heart by the time I actually sit down with a computer.  Maybe that other blog will get written some day.  I have notes, after all.  But not today.


I love the word "halcyon."   If you are a loyal reader of this blog you know that that word appears every now and again.  In my mind it is usually referring to the past. . . . "those halcyon days of yesteryear."   And I haven't actually looked this word up, but I think it means an idealistic, rose-colored bubble.   Now I'm going to look it up.   See how I put myself on the line?  Here, live and in person, I'm going to see if I was even close to being right!  Talk about reality blogging!  Of course, if it turns out I'm wrong, then I can just delete the previous paragraph and you would never know.  So here I go to look it up. . . .  . . . Just to keep in the spirit of "halcyon-as-yesteryear" I'm using my American Pocket Dictionary, and not my IPhone.  Hmmmm. . . . let's see here.  Well. . . .that just shows you how "pocket" this little dictionary which boasts 30,000 entries really is.  It wasn't there!  Which may mean I misspelled it.  Now I'm intrigued.   Off to find the IPhone.  (Like I don't know where my IPhone is. . . . . . )


Okay. . .well you are experiencing my further education live and in person.  I went to Wikipedia which kept referring to the bird, kingfisher.    Then I was referred to Wiktionary (which I didn't even know existed).   And again the bird stuff.  But it also says : peaceful, serene, undisturbed, calm.   BINGO!!


Not exactly my definition. . . and I'm big enough to admit it.  But maybe in this day and age anything peaceful, calm and serene is a little idealistic and just a tad rose-colored.  It's a stretch, I know.   But the peaceful/calm thing is exactly what this blog is about, as it turns out.


So I come home today after 5 days in DC.  GREAT days.  I sang a world class piece with a world class conductor and world class orchestra in a world class venue.   I had two spectacular 5 mile hikes around Burke Lake Park.  I was able to see and share a meal with each of my boys, and I was able to see their respective girlfriends both of whom I adore.  I celebrated St. Patrick's Day dressed in orange, and I took Dave out for his birthday dinner and he was kind enough to insist on sushi!   I visited with some friends I had not seen in many years.  All in all. .  . . a banner 5 days.


On the way home today I stopped by Whole Foods to fill my fridge with yummy goodness for the next few days.   And I got to come home!   To my little house.  And I unpacked the car, ran a load of wash, hung it on the line (making me, I'm sure, the only member of the performance last night to have their performance clothes hanging on a clothesline the next day,  and also making me, I'm sure, the only person in my neighborhood to have performance black from the Kennedy Center hanging on the line).   My two worlds in a delicious collision.


And then I sat on my new screened-in porch with a book that I bought at the library up in Springfield yesterday. . . . Steve Martin (yes, THAT Steve Martin) Shopgirl.   A small novella  that had me at hello.  And as I sat on the porch in my bouncy chair that I bought with Joan at an antique shop in Danville, Illinois once, I realized the extent of the HALCYON place where I have chosen to live.   


I have discovered that it is a wind tunnel for one.  But today, there was no heavy wind, just a light breeze.  But those mountains (in particular the mighty Humpback Mountain on the Blue Ridge Parkway) and the ever greening grass and trees.  And THE BIRDS!  I am the selected home, it appears, for quite a clan of mockingbirds.   I realize mockingbirds probably are not considered to live in clans, but this seems to be a rather large family so I think it fits.  They sing constantly, and it's beautiful.  One of them spent the afternoon trying to fly through my bedroom window once I had raised the blinds.  It's been many years since any living thing tried so hard to get into my bedroom, and I want to thank that mockingbird, male or female, for the gesture.


My back yard is peaceful, and serene, and calm and I'm completely smitten.  I have a giant crush on my back yard! Who knew?   Of course with all the wonderful birds flying about, chasing each other, singing and singing there is also the prerequisite evidence of habitation.  My great Adirondack chairs that have been repainted to match the trim on the house and now grace the deck outside my bedroom will need to be scrubbed off before I can sit in them.   Now, it appears, I may have to heed Joan's warning about one of the downsides of hanging clothes on the line. . . . bird poo!!!


But I guess I can't expect my birds not to poo now can I?   So I will overlook that minor inconvenience and declare that "halcyon" does not necessarily refer to days gone by.   Halcyon is here and now!    Lovely!