Sunday Morning

Sunday is the one day in the week when I do not go down to the dining room for breakfast. Instead, still in my nightgown and bathrobe, I make myself a cup of tea and sit on the couch watching television. I’ve done that ever since CBS started the “Sunday Morning” program more than 20 years ago.

In the beginning I cut off the program before its end to rush to 9:30 church at
St. Andrew’s Episcopal in Downers Grove, Illinois. After I moved to Albuquerque, I had time to get dressed and make the 11:00 a.m. service at St. John’s Cathedral. Now, in Garland, Texas, I don’t try to go to church any more. I call myself a sinner and relax on Sunday mornings.

Today’s program ended with ducks swimming in a pond at the Bosque del Apache Nature Preserve in New Mexico. I’ve been there many times, not to see ducks but sand hill cranes. These great (over three-feet high) birds spend each winter there. I watched at dusk when hundreds of cranes flew back to their nesting sites from feeding grounds, swooping down, wings spread wide, reminding me of World War II photos of fleets of bombers returning to base at England after raids on Germany.

Once, on a warm day in early spring, I was in a car driving the sandy road around the three-mile loop which circles the preserve. Sam said, “Is that snow over there?”

In the distance an open field was covered in white stuff. As the car passed closer, the “snow” became Canada geese, hundreds of them, packed closely together.

Not the first time I’ve seen something from a distance that proved entirely different up close. I’ve visited a lot of foreign countries. Never did I see a place that was exactly as I expected.