Summer Breeze

A nice time in the cul de sac.

I like the word “nice.” To me it has a lot of emotional content, but soft, easy emotions, not high-energy, intense ones.

I had hip replacement surgery ten years ago. Last year, the artificial hip broke, so they had to dig it out and replace it with a new one. It was a gruesome task—nothing “nice” about it. That was about 14 months ago, and the darn thing still isn’t back to normal. I take daily walks to help heal and recondition my damaged body parts.

A while ago, I went for one of those walks in a nice neighborhood in Marin County, north of San Francisco. While walking, I happened on an unexpected scene in a neighborhood cul de sac. One of the homes around the cul de sac had its garage door open, revealing three middle-aged guys playing guitars and singing. There was a grubby old blanket hung behind them as a backdrop to give the impression of a stage, and probably to hide the mess in the garage. Around the cul de sac were maybe twenty-five or so people sitting in lawn chairs, plus a couple of barbecues, all spaced better than six feet apart (I’m writing this in the middle of the Coronavirus epidemic). It was early evening, around six, there was still plenty of sunlight, and the temperature was eighty-ish, with a soft breeze keeping things comfortable. There was beer and wine, but it wasn’t a party. It was just nice neighbors and nice music. 

The guys were playing mostly 70’s tunes, and they were pretty good…better than a garage band, but not as good as a group of touring professionals. I particularly remember them singing “Summer Breeze,” the old Seals and Croft tune—not a great song, but a nice one, and perfect for the moment.

It was a place of peace and contentment, a place where beauty could emerge if you were open to it. There was a long-legged, black girl, maybe ten or eleven years old, creating beauty with every move. There was generosity and kindness from a middle-aged dad, who interrupted his barbecuing to offer me a chair so I could enjoy the evening a bit more. There was goodness I can’t explain or understand, but it was there. Though a stranger, I felt welcome. It was, for those moments, a place in which I became a different me, seeing things I wouldn’t ordinarily notice, and caring about things I wouldn’t ordinarily care about. 

I think it was the music that triggered my nice mood. Music can stir things inside you—bits and pieces of your past, feelings you may have lost touch with over the years, memories that resonate with the rhythm and lyrics. Maybe it just creates a sense of stillness…we don’t get much of that any more. Music can do all that, but you have to let it in.

I’m an introspective guy, but that evening was about something different from introspection. There was no thinking. There was just this simple, but profound, niceness all around me. Within me. 

Does all that sound a bit silly? I mean, an old guy, getting all mushy about a mediocre garage band? Isn’t it more likely that it was just a “senior moment,” or some misfiring neurons messing with my mind?

Maybe.

But it was a moment that now lives in my place of special memories. If I’m lucky, some guitar echo in the future will remind me of it and bring forth a shadow of that same experience. It won’t bring a tear…nice doesn’t bring tears. But the right kind of nice can slow you down, calm you, and ease you from a boil to a lazy simmer.

I wonder…if I prize them so much, why there aren’t more of these transcendently nice moments in my life? Does the cold, cruel world interfere? No, the world has its cold, cruel side, of course, but mainly, the world is what you make of it, neither cruel nor kind. It gives you what you expect of it. Ah…maybe that’s it…I don’t really expect nice, so I don’t get it much. 

Hmm… I guess that makes it all about me, doesn’t it? The niceness isn’t of the world, it’s something about me, and if I don’t get much of it, it’s because I’m getting in my own way. Could that be right? Do we create our own niceness…or joy or anger or fear or gratitude…or whatever?

That makes sense to me. It reminds me of a clever bit of wisdom I learned long ago. It’s only ten words of two letters each, yet it bears a touch of the profound: 

“If it is to be, it is up to me.”

Up to me…

Nice.