I step outside for the morning walk and there are the geese. All the geese. Waves and waves of geese.
If I lived in a Hitchcock film this scene would be scary. But it’s not scary; it’s the opposite of scary. Immediately overhead, high over my leafless maple tree, the geese are loud and proud, and this happens every year, I suppose, but never ever have I seen this many geese flying together, all at once, no, sir. More and still more join in. The geese align into a decidedly upper-case V.
Come one, come all, join in, wherever you are.
I go for that walk. I find myself in good spirits. I chat up a neighbor or two as we pass on the sidewalk. I greet the dogs (of course). Upon my return home, I notice that the steps sunk in. I have the sense this was a good decision. I go back inside my house. I sit on my couch. I take out my notebook. I don’t write long. I set my pen down.
A calm — a rare calm for this cat — comes over me. I have this unmistakable sense that everything’s going to be all right, and I don’t just mean today. I have this sense that something passed over me, through me, and that I will never be the same.
The only logical conclusion is that this feeling is a gift from the geese.