Awakening early the next morning, I slipped out
from beside George, pulled open the French doors of our bedroom, and pushed out
the balcony’s sagging shutters to sunshine. The clouds of the day before had
receded and left a vast expanse of deep blue.
I shivered in the sudden cold as I stepped out onto the same paint-chipped
balcony I had noticed on our arrival. I
looked around. To my right, was one wall of what we came to call the apple
house, because of the apples that were stored there during the winter. Embedded
in that wall was a small shrine with a statue of St. Joseph holding the Christ
child, and plastic flowers in a vase, about eight feet up and sealed behind
glass. Directly across from the balcony was a two-story stone barn. The doors were partially open and I could
hear animal noises and the clang of a bucket deep inside. Below me, the chickens clucked and pecked and
fluttered, their sounds mingling with the high-pitched whistle of the swifts
that shot across the open space to their mud nests in the overhang of the
barn.
To the left of the barn, the courtyard dropped away
to green trees and fields stretching down into the valley. Green hills rose on
the other side. No sounds drifted up from the valley below to my place on the
balcony: no rumble of cars or trucks, no squeal of brakes, no piercing sirens,
and no yelling voices. I held my breath
and listened to the thick stillness that cushioned the bird sounds, and I
watched a light mist drift along the dark green valley floor. As the sun warmed
my skin, I closed my eyes and breathed deeply of moist green with an
undercurrent of barn smells and contrasted it with the smog of Burbank so
recently left behind. I opened my eyes and looked again. It was beautiful. No
one had told me that it was going to be beautiful. At that moment I fell in
love with Gabi.
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