“Good morning Colonel, I see you’re wide awake today. How about some breakfast?”
He sniffs at me and wags his tail playfully. Clearly, he’s finished with his previous task and ready, like all men, for some sustenance after his gratifying workout. I take his exuberance as an unmistakable yes, snapping the red sequenced leash to his equally gaudy, matching collar. We walk in the other’s quiet company, each listening to the sounds of the world’s waking, its stretching and groaning in the morning light.
Fall has officially arrived. The autumn solstice was weeks ago, but today that unmistakable crisp, crackly feeling hangs in the air, the leaves are just turning, not quite their brightest shades of crimson and copper yet, and the brilliant blue sky categorically defies the ice being pushed into my pores with each new gust of wind. I pull the neck zipper on my sweatshirt upward and try to soak in a few moments of that fresh, tingly feeling before I totally cave to the miserable cold and quickly start-in, to a near canter, toward Joes.
Sheer determination carried me to Adamstown; little did I know I’d be freezing ten months out of twelve. Grandpa always said I scarcely have two degrees tolerance when it comes to temperature—he was right, of course—76-78*F, that’s my kind of weather. I’m an inside-looking-out kind of gal; I’ve never been a fan of actually standing in the brutal force of cold, hard rains, or the natural weight of heavy hail or even light snow. I much prefer the idea of weather and to look at the beauty of the rage from within the warm, safe place of a blanketed window seat, stacks of books on either side of my cider cup and chowder bowl.
“Raeleigh, my dear,” Grandpa would say on a night I used to think classified as cold, but really barely crossed the border into mild, “You will most certainly fall over dead from shock, you ever step foot outside California.”
I wish he could see me now. Sure, he’d laugh harder than the time I pissed myself climbing up the chest of drawers to reach Monopoly, but he’d be proud too; proud that I hadn’t given-up—the same stubborn pride that had me standing, five-years-old, in sopping pink Oshkosh overalls and a Cheshire Cat smile, looking between him and the spilled, wet paper money, exclaiming loudly, "Alright Grandpa, I'm ready. Let's play," still has me defying logic and reason as a twenty-four year-old. I’m going after what I want, even if it means pissing myself along the way—which, Lord, I hope it doesn’t.
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