Morning Walk

I've taken this photo before, different street, but the same photo, and by that I mean the same story: a morning walk to the bus for the daily ride to work. I've also shared these words before: I love the dark mornings of fall and winter, and the chilly walk down the street with tiny dots of white light to guide the way, with the morning moon hovering close.  In the morning, I walk through a cast of characters, and I love them all as if I'd chosen them to take part in my own brief play. The Italian cafe owner, the police officer on his way in for his morning cup, the theater worker with his coffee already in hand, taking count of the lights out on the marquee, the man in a rush with his Lean Cuisine sliding from his grip, and the mother unloading her small boy from the car and reminding him one more time that of course she'll be back to pick him up, and once again it will happen before he knows it.

I never put my headphones in to listen to podcasts and music until I turn the corner and all of these people are no longer in sight. I tend to like to remove myself from it all when I can, and to take in the quiet as if it were my own, but there are times like this morning walk when I want to be in the world with all of my senses, and to hear the hellos in English and Italian, curses whispered to slippery frozen meals, the whimpers and giggles of a child, and a mothers sigh as she leaves the daycare simultaneously relieved to be done with the first step and saddened to have made it at all.

There is a very good chance I will take this same photo again, and tell the same story, and appreciate the same people, sounds, and assumptions (my own, not theirs), but oh, even knowing that, I imagine I will love it just as much then as I do now.

I wonder, who are your characters?