From a blog in March of 2023…

Walked Penelope before breakfast this morning and thought about how the sun kisses the earth awake each day as she warms its fertile soil. Saw the first of the wild purple violets blooming in the yard next door. Had to search my brain to remember a quote I had scribbled on the back of a notepad last night. “Just follow the day and reach for the sun,” The Polyphonic Spree. This quote defines my retirement. I follow each day as it goes by and I’m always reaching for the sun, her warmth, her beautiful pageant of sunset.

The sky is beautiful, looks like God took a white pastel stick and rubbed it a few times across Father Sky’s blue sky canvas to draw some line clouds. Mother Nature cranked up the sun and the day turned out perfect. Ever waked up and immediately smiled knowing the day was going to be good? Or ever waked up with a frown and the miseries, not ready to face the day? Couldn’t sleep last night…last time I asked Alexa the time it was 1:48 AM and I was hearing Lynyrd Skynyrd’s Free Bird playing on my Echo Dot. It’s amazing at that time of night I remembered the Echo Dot’s name. So I got up with the no sleep miseries, but soon as I sat down in the porch swing, the miseries melted away as I watched my songbirds on the feeders and looked up at that blue sky. I immediately counted my blessings and thanked God for giving me another beautiful day of life.

Kept trying to get the word symphony out of my pondering but it was stuck too tight. Tried to formulate another word to write on but my thoughts wouldn’t let me change tonight’s topic. I had to be really be quiet to hear the earth’s music this morning. The symphony was very subdued. The birds were singing softly in the oak tree and the huge bumblebees were buzzing quietly around the purple pansies. My red bird wind chime is small and it jingled a quiet pleasant tune when the breeze rustled the pipes.

I was enjoying the quiet when a teenager drove down the street with thundering bass notes thumping from his car. Disturbed the birds. Sounded like a loud cymbal crash from one of John Philip Sousa’s stars and stripes military marches. After the car sped down the street and turned the corner, a chubby little wren sat on the gardenia bush by the bannisters and fussed at me for several minutes. Made me think of my high school band director scolding us when we didn’t perform well at practices. I thought, maybe that little wren was the symphony conductor. The car had disrupted the music and sent the musicians flying home. He was mad and blaming me.

Waiting for my subdued yard symphony to start playing again, I started thinking how a symphony can relate to our lives. Matshona Dhliwayo writes, “The world is an orchestra, the universe is a symphony.” I looked up the definition of a symphony—a musical composition for a full orchestra, typically in four movements, in which one movement is traditionally in sonata form. “Life is a melody, love is the harmony, and music is the symphony that makes our days a masterpiece,” Kymani Marley. Like a symphony our lives are divided into certain movements. We are born into the world in the first movement of our lifetime’s music with a loud clang of the crash cymbal. We coast along in our second movement with the woodwind section, going through early childhood with the occasional piccolo or oboe solo. If we’re really happy in our childhood we might hear the warm sounds of a mellow saxophone.

As we go through adolescence our symphony picks up the snare drum and the brass section of the orchestra, each sounding in time with our life’s marching direction. Adulthood brings the full orchestra with bangs and clangs and crescendoes, adds a xylophone to mark the birth of our children. As we age, the climax and fourth movement of our life symphony is a decrescendo into a quiet French horn sonata as we travel through the clouds to heaven. “Life is a symphony of moments, a harmonious blend of joy and sorrow, of triumph and tribulation,” Facebook. I bet when the gates of heaven swing open they sound like a million crystal wind chimes singing gloriously.

“Life is a melody, love is the harmony, and music is the symphony that makes our days a masterpiece,” Kymani Marley.