"Anticipation"

To anticipate is to give an event that might occur, advanced thought, discussion, or treatment. Anticipation is one of the formless elements that touches everything we do. They are what add the richness to our lives. Spawned when you cut fresh flowers and put them in your grandmothers vase on the kitchen table. Spawned when you take time to watch a rainbow or call a friend. Anticipated, done and enjoyed. They keep us in preparation for the movement of our lives through time and teach us. The process that sustains our ability to study life, often revealing answers.
Gypsy and I had anticipated the cold, rain that finally came during the night and ended our dry spell. Our eyes opened when our ears heard the drops begin to fall on the metal roof of the cabin. The wind whistled the rain story around the cabin windows. The trees in the woods tossing in the wind threw the rain message against the brown logs. As we listened, in the the total darkness, we were strangely content to have received the rain we had anticipated. It had been on our minds for weeks as we watched the dust on our gravel road rise up behind the few vehicles that use it everyday. Content, our rain drenched thoughts carried us back to sleep. With the first light Gypsy went outside to investigate the new smells that came with the rain. I followed her shortly, with my mug of hot expresso, and we both watched and listened to what the woods was telling us about the cold, wet morning.
I had anticipated this mug of coffee brewing on the stovetop in my 10 cup stainless steel Bialetta Expresso Machine. I probably thought about it yesterday. When my feet hit the floor this morning coffee was in my thoughts. The aroma of coffee brewing always finds a comfortable spot to land in the back of my mind. This is my only coffee of the day,so it has to be good. The whipping cream I add to it gives me the taste I anticipate. This is a tradition passed down to me from my mothers side of the family. My ancestors on their farms around Schaffhausen, Switzerland gathered to have their morning coffee. It was an important event. A friend just wrote a note to me in response to one of my stories. She said when she was a child and smelled the coffee and bacon her mother was cooking, she felt loved. It may seem a small thing to many, but, we choose savor all that life has to offer.
We wonder how to anticipate time. We have been alive way past half our lifetime. We don't know about the time we still have. The "Sound of the Hammer" is a book written by Carl Britsch, about my ancestors coming to this country. It contains an interesting few lines about time. "Time changes things, but does not change. Man changes, but time is constant as the sun. An hour today is the same duration as one of yesterday or a century ago; yet how slowly it drags when measured by our age or frame of mind. It is not ours to retard or accelerate the measured beat of time. We try to hold it e'er it passes, but lest we move on with it we fly in vain to catch again the moments past. Like runaway ponies, the moments ofttimes draw us where we would not go, and we find ourselves unable to retrace our steps to begin again. Time leaves its mark, and we gather up what is left and weave it into a pattern as best we can." We don't know what conclusions can be drawn about time, if any. We hope our time has been well spent. We hope we have not wasted too much of it, if that is possible. We will spend our anticipated time in some important way. Gypsy and I will sit on the porch in the morning and dream happy dreams of impossible size. She will be in a big, treeless field full of quail, squirrels and cats surrounded by her five foot high rabbit fence. I will be 100 years old, sitting on the porch of my cabin in the woods, expresso in my hand content to see her dream. Watching another story for my finger tips to find. Spending the time on my hands.
The good thing about the bad things in life we anticipate is that sometimes they are not as bad as we think they will be. Then there are the events that come into our lives consuming none of our anticipation. We have learned that worry can hide inside it before a dreaded event. All in all it brings a message with it that we can appreciate. It takes no shape beyond our thoughts that find a pattern stitched together by the eye of the needle of our mind.
Gypsy shows us the true meaning of anticipation as she holds a point on a squirrel at the feeder.