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DAVID BENTLEY'S WEEKLY COLUMN |
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SEEKING COMFORT
The fog was thick. It came out of nowhere like nothing and made you glad to not be a police officer or an EMT on a night like this. Street lights lit up the clouds, but could not penetrate them. The sky over town took on a strange yellow glow. Those of us who had not yet headed home were scrambling up and down the aisles at the grocery store looking for that perfect comfort food to make us feel safe. With the makings for a large pot of chili, I started walking home. The moisture laden air prickled my face with cold droplets of water. A group of women, obviously on a fall bus tour and hustling to get back to the inn with their shopping bags, asked if the weather did this every night. I giggled to myself, remembering the summer tourist who once questioned where the islands went in winter. The islands go nowhere, I thought, but merely hide themselves in a shroud of fog until being reborn in the spring. By the time I got home, the houses across the street had disappeared, and the shed out back was barely visible. I quickly closed my windows and turned on more lights than usual. Then I put a CD into the stereo to break the muffled silence outside and began to prepare my chili. After supper was done and my belly was full, I sat in my recliner reading a magazine while the warmth from my stomach radiated through my extremities. When my eyelids began to droop and no sirens had broken the reverie, I found my way to bed and quickly fell asleep. Two remembered dreams later, my eyes opened to a room illuminated by sunshine and reverberating with the sound of birds chirping. The fog was gone, seemingly as quickly as it had come. All was well with the world, and a new day was mine for the taking.
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SAN JUAN ISLANDER © 2008 |
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