ALWAYS SOMETHING BETTER UP AHEAD, MAYBE

The red-gold shafts of the morning sun filter through the pine trees and thinning pin oaks to find my eastern windows. Glass doesn't stop them. They come on through to caress the brass hands of the ever-in-motion clock, the blue glass bird of happiness and Raggedy Ann and Andy sitting, jauntily, on an upper window shelf.

The suncatchers, all gathered together in one eastern window, throw a stained glass replica on the opposite wall. There is a dove, a shamrock, two butterflies, a tulip and a bunch of cherries all colorful things. I watch their shadows shift along the wall as the sun moves and gradually snuffs them out. The brass clock hands lose their sun luster too, as if it is time to be rid of fanciful things and get on with ordinary business of the day. But the ordinary business of the day need not be boring or dully laden as I remind myself of my old saying and belief, "There's something better up ahead."

The coffee pot clicks off and the delicious aroma of a warming doughnut stirs me to action. I choose a thin, china cup for the coffee. No use going through life drinking from a thick mug when a thin china cup is around. I have several all gifts. This particular morning I choose one that was a long ago gift from Aunt Minnie. It is cobalt blue, Nippon, extravagantly trimmed with 24-carat gold, and it came all the way from California, with six others, without a chip or a crack.

The cup seems as thin as onion skin and I know that if I follow the sun to another room and take a proper chair, the coffee in my cup will make a happy, little swirling dance on the ceiling. If my cup isn't too full I can make the reflection do the Sunny Morning Sway, a dance not done to Rock and Roll music.

It is too late these mornings to watch the school children short-cutting across the yard to meet the big yellow bus. Up until now I've been amused at their passage. It hasn't been eager nor graceful. Mostly they've run with something trailing out behind a sweater sleeve or a shirt tail. Maybe a piece of homework. They've slept late. If they drop a piece of homework, they have no time to pick it up. I haven't had time to catch them, but I later pick up the papers and put them in a very visible place where they'll be sure to see them on their return journey. Sometimes I think it just as well if they don't turn their homework in that day.

I must confess that if it is an arithmetic paper or English theme, I'm guilty of examining. Shame on me! But I learn, to my amazement, that 2680 divided by 4 is 5170! And that commitment is misspelled, committment. I shake my head sadly and repeat, "Oh well, better times up ahead."

With morning light, cup of coffee at hand, it is time to read the morning paper. Proposition B is all over the front, back and middle. I already know how I'm~ going to vote on it so don't read much more about it. Maybe by some circuitous way its passage will trickle down to show someone that 2680 divided by 4 is 670.

Better still, I wish that down Proposition B's circuitous path, should it pass, more young people, and old too, will make a more serious commitment to learning. Teachers are getting blamed for everything and they're getting tired of it. And I don't blame them. If a parent had checked that lost arithmetic problem in division couldn't he or she have pointed out the ridiculousness of the answer? Oh well, something better up ahead, I think.

I turn to read of the "Tomahawk Chop" and someone's effort to introduce it here to our Indian Sports fans. I don't blame the native American Indians for wanting to rid themselves of the stereotypical image of a savage chopping off someone's head, knifing off the scalp and hanging it on his belt. But, true as it might have been, hasn't it become a sort of harmless hyperbole of what we're going to do to our sports competitors? However, before passage of time makes hyperbolic of what we might do to our sports rivals, native American Indians might retali~ate and come up with sweatshirts showing a soldier deliberately shooting a Vietnamese man in the head, a pict~ure we've all seen again and again.Finally, I turn to "The Family Circus" which I save for the last and find Jeffy sitting up in bed, after dark, and asking, "How many days are there after tomorrow?"

We all want to say, "A lot, Jeffy." Of course there may not be a lot for many of us but we could think to ourselves, which Jeffy wouldn't understand, maybe when there are no more days left for us and we see "the light at the end of the tunnel," it's not a train coming toward us. Someone has thrown a switch and the train is really backing up!

REJOICE!