Outside...

It would be no surprise to those who have followed this little blog for any period of time to know of my affinity for the outdoors.  There has always been a healing balm in it for me.  I could try to analyse it to death, and it really wouldn't make any difference.  It's just there.  Sometimes, something as small as sitting on the back terrace to eat my lunch can make the rest of the day seem less of a struggle.  One of the best things in the world is to be able to get out of the city briefly and let the eyes "stretch" - let them focus on the horizon of the sea, or a distant hilltop. It is physical, mental and spiritual all at the same time.

When my children were young, we spent lots of time outside, weather permitting.  Getting out of the house was a necessity.  They needed to run, preferably in the grass, climb, swing, jump, chase, and sometimes, just sit under the sky.  And it was always better inside if you had been able to go outside during the day.

Last night, I went to visit my mother, who lives in a skilled nursing facility now, and is confined to a wheelchair - really confined in that she cannot stand on her own, but is either in the chair, or in the bed.  All she wanted to do while I was there was to get out of the building.  Fortunately, there are lovely gardens on site, and a recently enlarged front porch with ceiling fans and accommodating tables where we had a "picnic" dinner of hamburgers and leftover fruit.  Even though there are plenty of noises of the city on that that corner, they are all noises that reflect life happening - normal things going on in the world, people getting home from work, kids coming home from school, grabbing groceries, etc.  We were outside - away from mutterings of the infirm and unhappy, and the push of dining room staff encouraging the hard of hearing to eat their meal so that everything could stay on schedule.  We were outside - where we could stretch our eyes to look at all the different colors of green in the garden, and admire how the new planting had taken hold, the ground cover had filled in, and that, even with the fall coming on, there were still many colors of blooms on the roses.  There were plants that even my mother, a life-long and avid gardener, could not identify, but oohed and ahhhed over as if they were her own.  

When it was all over, she knew when she was ready to go inside.  In terms of total time spent in comparison to the length of a normal day, it was just a fraction - just an hour.  But it made all the difference in the world to her.  Just to be outside...