I pause in my morning visit with my journal to breathe, to listen to the wind chimes outside my window, and to feel the warm coffee flow down my throat to warm my entrails.
The wind chimes are in the background almost always, because we live on a windy hill, and the song is always the same, infinite in its variety and comforting because no matter how the wind blows is the promise of music — the world’s energy not exactly harnessed but borrowed (perhaps) to find music in the gentlest breeze and the harshest storm.
The wind chimes were a gift, and they are a gift to this day. Gifts are like that, aren’t they? You always remember that someone gave this to you. They are a bit of someone else’s soul saying, “I thought you might like this, or need this,” and when they were right the memory of that person lingers with the gift for as long as you have it and longer. And if the gift was an act, the memory lives all the longer.
The wind chimes have no set melody. The melody is the wind.