Redemption

The smell out in the woods is amazing this morning. It’s damp and just beginning (on my second cup of coffee) to mist real softly. You couldn’t get better conditions for the smell of fall…in the woods…where no rake has ever been. It seems to be the wet leafs that make for the best pungency of this smell. It permeates – like when you’ve got a pumpkin pie in the oven.

I’m so sorry if you’re living in one of those states where the seasons don’t change – just about as sorry as I will be jealous a month from now. Even today, I’m sitting in my down jacket. It’s red and has a hood with black fur. It is not called for. It’s just that I’ve had this cold, and the worst symptom of it has been that I can’t get warm. I walk around feeling chilled to the bone all day. So I haven’t been here in the cabin for a while. I miss it. I know my time (before it is truly too cold to be here) is limited. It’s Saturday morning. How can I resist?

Yesterday, I had the down jacket sitting out so that I could wash it before I really need it (yeah, I know, it’s one of those chores you’re supposed to do in the spring). I wore it out to test the weather in the yard. Today, it’s made it possible to be out here. You feel so dumb about stuff like this. Dumb to wear your down jacket in the cabin so that you can write. Dumb to think it matters. Dumb that you didn’t think of it sooner.

I was in a shop yesterday – one of those convenience store kind of places. I was stopping on my way home from work and as I sat in the car checking my cash, realized I’d left it in the pocket of the last coat I’d worn (a hazard of this time of year – one day you’re in down and the next in a hoodie). After debating going home and coming back, I entered the store. I asked the guy behind the counter, “Do you take charge cards?”

He leaned over the counter, a big Arab guy, and asked quietly, “Why are you whispering? Yes. We take credit cards. It isn’t a big secret.”

I hadn’t realized I was whispering. We both laughed (real quietly). I said, “I left my cash in my other jacket.”

He says, “Everybody uses charge cards.”

I say, “Well, yeah, I know, but I don’t usually use my charge card for this kind of thing. I guess I’m feeling guilty.”

He says, “That’s good. If you don’t feel guilty you’re a perfectionist. If you feel guilty, you’re open for redemption.”

So I guess I’m open for redemption.

It was such a gentle, personal, exchange in an unexpected place that it kind of made my day. Sometimes it seems to me that it doesn’t matter what your philosophy is if you deliver it in a gentle way, in the time and place where the opportunity arises. I thought of it because it’s like feeling dumb for wearing my down coat. These mornings are when I have the gentle exchanges with myself: “You do what you’ve got to do. There’s nothing dumb about it. You’re here. Relax. Savor. Enjoy.”