peace, quiet and bird songs...

I will miss these quiet mornings.  I am sitting outside on the patio, listening to the birds.  There is one in particular that I have grown quite fond of.  I don't know what it is, I can't see it out of the windows or from the patio.  It is a hauntingly beautiful call, loud, but not shrill.  It seems to only call in the wee hours of morning, before the sun has agreed to wake up. It echos through the garden outside the apartment, soft, deep, with a beautiful melody.  That alone could convince me this is a great place to be.  As the sun breaks over the horizon and the smaller birds start singing, it stops, the void left is so noticeable.

I probably won't hear it tomorrow, as by that time of the day we will be at the airport, not sitting outside sipping tea and listening to bird songs.

It's odd, the sheer number of people here yet it is so much greater than where I live.  I have no idea how many live in this apartment complex alone, and yet it is so quiet, so peaceful and so beautiful.  The stucco walls must be amazing isolators of sound, or maybe they simply respect the silence and beauty much more.

In a week I have not once heard people driving down the road with music blasting, walking the beach involved no profanity.  And the only homeless people I saw were in Hollywood.  And not one of them followed me down the street harassing me.

I guess my jaded mid-west mind set was incorrect.  Sure gas is more expensive, but only by about thirty cents, the apartment was more than I would want to have to pay, but honestly... there are many apartments in the mid-west that are equally as expensive and not as nice. I guess it is a trade off.

At home... we would love to be considered diverse, but honestly, we are not.  We grate and grind against each other, our cultures, beliefs, the way we talk, the way we raise our children, the way we simply exist. I have had dear friends ask me to not go into certain neighborhoods out of fear.

Sitting with the Grand baby by the pool yesterday, just in this one little apartment complex, I heard so many different languages, dialects, accents, everyone from the business professional in full three piece suit to the surfer guy and his son.  Old, young, everything in between.  Everyone was so kind to each other, smiling and saying hello, it was so much like what I am used to, the way that I grew up.

Makes me wonder just what everyone at home is afraid of.  The boy had his hair cut yesterday, Bertha was definitely not German, even with a German name.  She was a wonderful woman of Hispanic descent.  I am enjoying this melting pot.  I am loving the vast differences and the single common denominator, everyone is human.

The boy told me that here everyone kind of stays to themselves, at the end of a busy day they go home and spend time with their friends and families.  It sort of seems that way.  I am sure there are people here that aren't friendly, of course it isn't a utopia, but if they aren't they are discrete about it.

Maybe I didn't go into the historically "bad" neighborhoods.  I admit I haven't been hanging out in Compton or any of the others.  Hollywood was the worst neighborhood I was in.  And it is not nice.  For an area of over 3.8 million people, there seems to be more nice, caring and kind people than I expected.  It will be hard to leave in the morning.  I have enjoyed the time with my boy.

While I will miss him, I will leave knowing he is in a good place.  I will take peace with me.