The Burrow

I had a brilliant idea for this post but then a family of quail - mom, dad and about a dozen babies - just scurried across the front yard and all rational thought vanished.  

It was a quiet moment in my head.  I felt my face smiling and my eyes scanning but that was all.  

No random memories of the mistakes I've made along the way popping up to disturb me.  No nagging list of To Do's peeking through some brain cells.  No planning for the future, near or far.  

Dinner is in the works.  The dishwasher is emptied.  The laundry is merrily flinging itself around without any help from me.  The yucca's flowers are hosting finches for dinner outside the library window.

Why am I looking for something to stress about? 

I had an angsty childhood.  It wasn't a particularly unhappy home, but I was a worrier, always waiting for the other shoe to drop.   I knew that as long as I worried, nothing bad would happen.  So, I worried.

Medication and therapy helped a lot.  I no longer feel a knot in my gut when I wake up from what are still, many times, tumultuous dreams (getting shot didn't help there.... nope, not at all.... that subconscious is really hard to tame).  

Yet there are times like these, when all is right (for the most part) in my world, when the here and now is peaceful, when there's nothing to disturb my mood, that I have to push through a vague level of unease to get to the serenity.

Hard wired from my youth?  Remnants of a New Yorker's natural skepticism? Twisted synapses that mistake calm for distress?

First world problem, for sure.