Fox in the City

A few months ago I was out shopping with a friend. We were driving around Berlin at night, in a borrowed car, tracking down items for a church function the next day. The excursion stopped being fun a few hours earlier, and we were still trying to find a warehouse store that neither of us had been to. Our conversation was wandering, and the whole episode was getting tedious.

I was also suffering from low blood sugar. Susie (who I fondly refer to as 'tits on a stick') had "filled-up on dried nuts & fruit" before we met up and was still (her words) "stuffed." I on the other hand always look stuffed so my confessed hunger didn't seem to register any concern. With a friend of average (or preferably over-average) weight I would have pressed the issue. But how could I tell this waif that I, her beefy friend, was starving?

Bottom line; I was homesick -- craving familiarity and convenience in the form of a Walmart or Target and a friend who knew me well enough to drive-thru. 

I tried to distract myself by taking in the city -- the gleaming displays in store windows; old architecture glowing in the sparkle of electric light; the revealed interiors of brightly lit apartments that in daylight are masked by the glare of sun on glass. And then a red fox.

It crept from the shadows of a parked car, peered into the on-coming traffic then paused a second before it turned and was gone.

All of my thoughts melted away in that intensely focused moment. I felt a jolt of affirmation.  If I had been anywhere else in the world, I would have missed it.

CC