Sunday In The Park


I left the fitness club late on Sunday morning. The sunny and empty streets of a slowly awakening city welcomed me. It had that particular Sunday feel: slow and easy. I was thinking how beautiful everything seemed as I walked home through the slowly stirring streets. I stopped at a Boulangerie to pick up sandwiches and sparkling water.

Later in the day we walked to Luxembourg Garden to attend a chorale presentation and have a picnic. It was a perfect late summer/early fall day, sunny, warm, and faintly melancholy. Every inch of the park was filled with Parisians enjoying this great day. Summer was ending.

The crowds had it all: retirees, young handholding couples, kids on father’s shoulders, picnickers, soccer playing boys, and children with ice cream, young mothers with prams, and aged pensioners out for a day of sunshine. The music kiosk was thankfully in a grove of chestnut trees, providing shade and a welcome sense of coolness. The edges of the Chestnut leaves were beginning to curl up and turn rust color. Autumn is coming.

It wasn’t until later that my untrained ear realized the chorale quality wasn’t very high. Jimmy Bogue they were not. But it was a perfect Parisian day, Mary and I walked through the park soaking up the good feelings and being grateful.

It was a perfect sunny day; there was a cacophony of people, colors and clothes. I even saw a Hawaiian shirt. Maybe Dave Dyc was here. The promise of the morning was born out.