Under the covers snug!

How I love early mornings. Nothing like the feel of burrowing under my two cozy comforters and feeling their love and warmth. I sleep downstairs in my huge family room and turn my head to see the blur of green leaves still on the trees this late September.

The light is simply beautiful. I catch the faintest fiery glimpse of the sun rising across the street. I hold the fire in my mind, staring and staring at its reflection, not at the sun, as if it will impart its grandeur into my humble bones.

There is much to do today but let me commune with myself before rising. Perhaps I can do a little reading. I pick up Main Street by Sinclair Lewis. I read it as a teenager but need a great novel to keep my mind stimulated. The first thing we notice about Lewis is He is a poet. Next we see that he stuffs his novels full of ideas and images like a Thanksgiving turkey filled with all manner of chestnuts and white raisins and savory seasonings. We are in the presence of a great mind. He's a Nobel prizewinner, writes with a confident voice that makes you want to jump from your bed and sample all of life's glories.

I shall read more of him later when it's time to go on my stationary bike.

The light has moved now to Charley's lawn across the street. Soon I will have windows that actually open up and let in the breeze. My house is an inferno in the summer. No cross-ventilation. Bob will fix that. For a small fee, of course.

Sinclair Lewis chronicles Minnesota the way Faulkner did the South. I wonder if Ethan, my son/law, has read much of him. Ethan has the same kind of love-hate relationship with the area as does Lewis. The female heroine is doomed by her marriage. As a free-thinking woman, I identify with her. She's brilliantly portrayed.

I have lain under covers for 63 years. Not always happily. I think to myself, My whole life is contained within my brain. Everything I have seen or heard, real things or movies or baseball games I've been to or played in, it's all in there - where? how? If set free, where would it go? Balloons in the sky? Thoughts sailing over the trees, lodging in alleyways, doorsteps, swallowed by dogs, chipmunks, Buddhist monks. My own thoughts - do they really emanate from ME - or have I caught them like radio signals with antennae?

These are my thoughts under the covers early in the morning as I draw the covers up to my chin. The birds sing their mystery chorus outside.

Last week, three sparrows paid me a visit inside. I was upstairs brushing my teeth when I heard the piercing cry of sparrows. I opened an empty bedroom door and saw two of them flying back and back, back and forth, trying to get out.

It is one thing to love the little creatures on your backyard trees but another to see them flying in your bedroom. Patrick came over and shielding his eyes, which they began pecking, opened a window and they flew out. As he was leaving, another flew back in. Scott came back over and stuffed some cardboard in the window to keep them out. This is where an air-conditioner was removed.

I imagined this morning living with wild animals in my house. How about some of those cute deer that eat everything in sight? They could have one of the empty bedrooms. I'd simply move out back in the forest. Like John Muir.