Shooting from the Heart

A shrill whistling invaded Jana's thoughts jolting her abruptly back to the present. She turned from the window and the glistening snow outside and rushed toward the kitchen to silence the demanding tea kettle. The Sunday morning sun was high in the sky now streaming across the spacious kitchen. Jana sipped her tea thinking about how far her life had come from the days in Philadelphia and New York. Gazing at the ocean, it gave her comfort that it all seemed muted and vague, as something experienced in another lifetime. There was something intangibly serene about living close to the sea. taken her seemingly eons of time to bring her here at last and she could still not get enough of it though she'd been in Newport, Rhode Island almost a year. The faithful crashing of the waves, the screeching of a lone seagull, the far-off foghorns droning intermittently, how she had longed for these sounds and now embraced them fully. Jana opened the window a crack to breathe in the salt sea air and feel the dampness against her face.A line she'd read once long ago by an eight year old French poet came back to her: the sea was there, rubbing against the window like a chilly kitten; the cat shook her gray tummy and my face was sprinkled with pleasure and the hard hand of happiness grasped my heart." Life was good, so intensely good that at moments like these she feared it might be snatched away.