Stepped out of the house, out of its cool shadow and into the bright sunshine. Up the two concrete steps to carry out the errand I have since forgotten about, remembering the sunshine warm on my skin, bright in my eyes, making the just past ripeness of early autumn lushness move and glow.

The weeping cherry to my right is so dense I cannot see what it hides in its skirt of leaves, content instead to lose my attention to the pencil straight lines arching over each other in their shared, belled, journey toward the earth. Even the serrated, arrowed, leaves edge downward, the V of each one's crease ready to catch and direct morning dew and rain toward its cause. A unity of movement orchestrated to kiss the earth in the hope of rebirth in an uprising of its true form.

On my left is a vertical jungle of enthusiastic competition. The wisteria has gone mad, its soft strands defying gravity and straight logic in its reach up, down, around, between: an exuberant hairdo of soft green. The morning glory vine weaves out its own territory in its delicate thread upward through the wisteria, celebrating its claim in open declarations of soft, palmed hearts of green.

I stand on the small square of concrete between the vines and the weeping cherry, and look up at the very blue sky. All that open space between lushness. Life feels rich. There is nothing stopping me from savoring this, from celebrating the experience of this magical moment, the luxury of it. The pause of this second interrupts the compulsion of my obligations, and I step through this fissure into the freedom that I habitually deny myself. Now, unemployed, childless, pet-less, there is no hiding the identity of my jailer. In this sliver of opportunity, I walk away.

Walk out into the garden. Walk onto the un-mown grass sprouting villages of mushrooms the unusually wet season has surprised us with. Onto grass speckled with the beginning of autumn's casualties. I stand in this clearing made secret by the tall trees circling it, turn my face to the 11 am sun that won't judge my grubby PJs. I breathe in the air still edged with morning crispness. Breathe in the pines, the green lushness that has surrendered its flowers, breathe in the beauty soon to be gone, and it enters into me without meeting any resistance.

Breathing in this lush, majestic, fading beauty I feel it find its watermark in me until the inside and outside are level, and there is no difference between the spirit of all this and the spirit that is me. There is recognition. I recognize this beauty because I am also that. For the first time there isn't even a flinch of opposition to this, there is no need for words. The truth is so simple and clear there is no need for any persuasion. I am beautiful, and I have always deserved to walk out into this garden of joy and breath in the reminder of it, the reminder that brings me home to the good earth of myself.