Summer into Autumn

If I could have been granted every wish for my resettling into Seattle, it would have been no different from what I have been welcomed with in the past three weeks. An apartment waited for me not only in my old neighborhood, but in my old building, bigger and brighter than the one I'd lived in before. Sunlight pours through my eastern window in the morning, the western as the days end, and my view is of brick, terracotta and a furl of green trees on a nearby hill.

Summer in Seattle is an intoxicating season which came late this year. I like to think that it was waiting for me. Having warm sunlight strike my skin as I drink my morning coffee is a blessing--and one that had often eluded me in my final months in Bangkok. Here through the buildings that slope toward Puget Sound it's almost always possible to glimpse the water, which glitters and sparkles with sunlight and always stops me cold when I see it. Loveliness.

Although the pain of giving away my horrendous little Bangkok cat was enough to make me feel I wouldn't have another for years, life thought otherwise and an orange kitten and I found each other. I've wanted an orange guy for decades and was always claimed by a different shade of feline, but Mean Mr. Mustard Mulrooney walked in and took over me, my apartment and everything in it without a bit of hesitation. Happiness.

Yesterday I wandered through Seattle looking for presents. My youngest son's birthday is coming soon and for the first time in a long time I'll be able to spend part of that day with him. There is no word to sum up what I feel when I think about that.

Life is very, very good.