Lately it seems as if all I do is look for comfort. When I shop at Goodwill, I am drawn to the section where they sell sheets and blankets and bedspreads and I keep buying soft and cozy things to lay under as if all I did was lounge around my house, seeking soft and cozy perches. One that I bought was the amazing velvet and satin throw, the other, the one I bought yesterday was not nearly as nice and is made of a fabric which may in fact be nylon and which is filled with 100% virgin polyester which goes against all my grains but it reminds me of the comforter my friend Mary Lane had on her bed when we were children.
Comfort.
The other night I had a sudden urge, no, a need, to read some Larry McMurtry. I needed his plain language, his understanding of women and men and their ways and of the extraordinary wrapped in the plain and I wanted to revisit one of his books to find comfort there. I couldn't find Moving On, which is what I really wanted. I have lent it away, I suppose. I picked up Terms Of Endearment instead, from my bookshelves and I opened the old paperback and began to read and it was comfort and I was not disappointed.
I am sure many more people have seen the movie and it's a good one. Shirley Maclain, Jack Nicholson, and Debra Winger soar through that story on the screen but the book makes me happier.
"Anything you want, just keep it away from me,"Aurora said. She slipped off her shoes and stockings before she got out. The bright green grass of her lawn was nice and wet and she took her time walking across it. Somehow being barefoot always made her feel more the way she liked to feel. It was so much easier being enthusiastic when her feet were touching something besides shoes. Time and time again she had to fight down an urge to throw all her shoes in the garbage and begin a retreat from life- it was one of her strongest if most unladylike urges.
Yes.
Comfort. The comfort of bare feet touching anything but shoes. The comfort of words I've read before but delight in again upon rereading. The comfort of soft covers, of soup simmering for hours and bread rising in a glass bowl in a warm kitchen. The comfort of this place I am so loathe to leave. The comfort of at least the small beginnings of the retreat from what we call life with all its traffic and rudeness and sharp edges.
Here is my world today. We are supposed to get temperatures down in the twenties again tonight and tomorrow and so I will cover up the porch plants which are still alive and put away the thoughts of the garden for a few more days. But today, this morning, it is chilly but not freezing and the camellias (I hope you are not tired of them- I can never be any more than I can be tired of Aurora or Emma or Patsy or Gus or naps or finding eggs just-laid) are so glorious,
the azaleas are promising sudden bursting,
the morning light falls so beautifully through the oaks with their Spanish moss,
the Japanese Magnolia buds stick out their purple tongues at me,
the palms I have planted bring me joy as I watch them grow in a yard that needed them.
And the road in front of my house leads off to everywhere- everywhere in the world and sometimes I do yearn to get on it, that road, to see where it takes me, sometimes in a car or sometimes by foot, but mostly I am only glad it's there in case I should need it and knowing how happy I am to be here behind the white fence in this tiny world where no camera can catch the smallest things properly or the biggest ones either. But my eyes can and my heart is comforted by them all.
