Growing up, I would watch my mother's morning ritual of opening the windows around our house.
Usually this slow, graceful movement throughout the rooms was accompanied by a loving, staccoto of bends to water her houseplants.
Her verdant proteges populated most rooms in our house, sitting each in their terra cotta pot, neatly nestled, in turn, in a wide-brimmed saucer to catch the water draining through their aromatic soils.
My aloof Siamese cat followed my mother like a dutiful dog, pausing to lap up water from the abundant selection of saucers.
The house was hypnotically silent, except for the sound of Anthony's blue-tinged tongue lapping, almost silently, at the water filtered expressly for her, and the obstreperous birds busying themselves beyond the screened sliding doors leading to our veranda.
Often today, when I sit writing on my laptop, watching my tawny, breedless cat, Anthony the Second, curled up contentedly in the sunlight streaming through my bedroom window, atop the writing desk I no longer use, I am back in the coastal Lowcountry of Georgia.
My mother could, at any minute, enter stage right, and blend seamlessly into this Californian morning, sit in my empty desk chair, and quietly gaze out the window toward the sound of birdsong in our Presidio garden.
