St. Francis and the Stone Lions...

It is a perfectly crisp chilly late fall morning. Wood smoke billows from several chimneys and saturates the air with the scent that signals winter is almost here. I am at home...homehome... familyhome...Chicagohome for a few more hours before I make the trek back to Cinci. I just finished an early morning walk/jog that is a necessity on mornings like these and am sitting in the comfy overstuffed chair that if I could fit it into my little Jeep I would sneak back to my apartment. A venti three pump soy no water chai w/cinnamon powder on top and brown sugar pop tarts put the icing on this morning. I love walking around our completely stereotypical subdivision...statues of St. Francis and Mary dot front yards and walkways and even though I'm not Catholic and these saints have religious value to me, I find them faintly comforting...a part of home. Like the stone lions at the end of one of our townhouse neighbors very short driveway, the lions that sit right next to the temporary well-worn basketball hoop. Like the elderly Indian woman with cataracts who never recognizes me, her with the sari wound tightly around her under the hoodie that she wears on her morning walks to keep out the cold Like the tiny white poodle named Gracie who for the longest time my dad thought her name was Crazy. They are little bits of home, comfort, memories, and reality...