I am up at 7:30, sitting on the stone pier in Collioure.  The water is flat and calm, the sun already farther above the horizon than the ancient clock tower rising solid against the powder blue sky. Pigeons strut about nervously, joined by twittering brown thrashers.  I hear the street cleaners making their run to wash and polish the cobblestones, as they do every morning.  The muted rumble of their engines ebbs and flows as they work their way up and down the lacework of alleys, edging ever closer to my solitary perch. The young man in ubiquitous ocean blue shorts and a navy shirt is methodically setting up the umbrellas over the chairs outside his restaurant.  Otherwise, this port is still and reverent, holding the glory of a new day.

During the past week, Collioure began to fill with tourists, mostly European, mostly French, but it is still not high season.  Only a half dozen boats are tied to buoys in the port, but shops that had been shuttered when we arrived are showing signs of life.  Yesterday, Sunday, the main plaza filled with people watching a circle of dancers in traditional Catalan garb step and hop to the polka-like music. Even the weather seems to know it is time for the tourist.  The days have grown warm enough to brave a swim.  The wind has retreated back to Africa or wherever it originates. But this fresh, clean morning is mine, or so it feels.  Most of the world is still asleep.  How is it that all of eternity fits so comfortably in this tiny, awestruck moment?

And such a brief moment it is.  Even as I type, the vans delivering fresh produce to the corner store begin to arrive, the roar of their engines disrupting the stillness.  The chairs on the wide esplanade are now neatly arranged around the small round tables.  The green, blue and red umbrellas are tied open.  I hear the low, distant clammer of the morning train, a beeping of the construction machinery starting up, the clanging of storefronts opening, and the bugle blowing revelry for the soldiers who train in the ruins of the fort high above the port.  The town is throwing off sleep. 

The cool early morning sun is disappearing, growing hotter as it rises above the fog, a smudge of gray along the horizon.  In five minutes I will be hot, the delicious cool morning breeze a thing of the past, just as my silence is now vanishing with the arrival of the street cleaners, the early morning swimmers, the first joggers, the conversations and greetings between employees arriving for work, the inevitable forward motion of time.

As my still cool morning slowly dissolves, a window in my mind, briefly opened to the sacred, silently closes.  I hold its opening and closing lightly.  Nothing shuts the window more tightly than grasping.  Tomorrow, if I rise early enough, if I sit still enough, it may open again, although it can be fickle.  It opens and closes according to the rhythm of some grace or science I do not understand.

The man in the blue shorts is smoking a cigarette now, leaning against the stone wall of his restaurant surveying his completed task, nodding his head in good morning to the trickle of his fellow shop owners moving through the memorized choreography of their morning.  The ocean sparkles with flashes of sunlight, diamonds tumbling on a rippled sheet of velvet blue.  The sun is hot.  The soft lover’s kiss of morning is a memory.  The window has closed.    

Like this morning, our sabbatical is coming to an end.  We are coming home, and it feels as if another window is closing.  We have our plane tickets (thank you Bob and Sabrina). We have our train tickets, two of the last three available.  We waited until the last minute, almost waited too long.  Was that intentional, or denial, or both? 

I feel this trip more than remember it.  I feel my rain-soaked body exhilarated in the primordial brilliance of the Milford Trek. I feel the electrical sting of touching infinity on the top of a boulder I should not have climbed, staring in triumph and awe at the impossible heights of snow-covered Mt. Cook.  I feel the warmth and intimacy of a quiet, star-studded night curled up next to Melissa in the back of a camper van, our breathing, like our heartbeats, synchronized.  I feel the loneliness and despair of the Killing Fields, the wide-eyed wonder of Angkor Wat, the dreamy semi-consciousness of drifting supine on a kayak on a river in a jungle.  

We lovingly shared our last week and apartment with Nick and Altinay.  Yesterday, after a long, wandering walk into the hills, we spent the afternoon swimming before dozing on the beach, the warm rocks a perfect contrast to the cool ocean breeze.  Around 7:00, with the sun hanging above the hills as hesitant to set as we are to leave, we walked along the sea wall to a bar terraced into the rocky hillside and ordered Mojitos, a Long Island Iced Tea, and a Dark and Stormy.  A few swimmers paddled in the water out by the sailboats moored to buoys.  At our feet dangling from barstools, the gentle swells seeped between the crevices in the jagged rocks and tiny fish floated effortlessly in the swishing current. We toasted the day, the view, the endless blue ocean that melts into an endless blue sky.  Altinay said what our hearts were feeling, “I live my life for this kind of blue.” 

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Later that evening, after dinner, we sat on our rooftop quiet, happy, and drenched with the delicious fatigue of a packed day, a day too full to hold.  Twilight loitered like a love-struck teen by his girlfriend’s locker. A tree on the far horizon at the top of the hill above the vineyards began to glow, backlit by an unseen spotlight. Moments later, our eyes fixed on this anomaly; the full moon, huge, bulbous detached itself in slow motion from the horizon.  Altinay means “golden moon.”

We are coming home to family, to friends, to a memorized rhythm of time that we hope will not mesmerize us.  We are coming home sated with joy, tenderized by unearned beauty, full of time and memories and love.  

The dog walkers have arrived. My computer is too hot in my lap. It is time to buy croissants, return to the apartment, and greet Melissa, Nick and Altinay. The morning is well past. Yet, as I walk up the alley to our apartment, fishing for the keys and biting into the soft, lightly crunchy goodness of a croissant, I smile at my foolishness.  There is no window, no separation between the sacred and profane.  My quiet, beautiful morning did not disappear.  It is all around me all the time.  There was never a time when it was not, and there will never come a time when it is not.  The illusion is the window, my words on this page, their naked inadequacy in the face of a golden moon.

Still, I am sad to leave.