On Thursday mornings I put on my black exercise clothes, lace up my tennis shoes, grab my lime green exercise mat and head down to the park. Mid way to the park I meet up with Jerry my Pilates guy.

Once inside the park, Jerry and I find a spot amongst the trees, but also in the warmth of the morning sun. We lay down our exercise mats on the closely clipped lawn and do a little warm-up routine. After a series of stretches and bends we do 20 minutes of fast moving Pilates movements.

The setting where we exercise is off the beaten path. It is an oasis in the city and the perfect intersection of convenience and nature and urban.

Exercising outside in a public park has its potential for distractions and interruptions. A sniffing dog once surprised the wits out of me while I was lost in a move known as the Palates pushup. A jogger once took a spill on the nearby jogging path and literally rolled down the hill landing at my feet.

Jerry says its too hot and stuffy in the gym to do Pilates and that I should simply concentrate when exercising outside. Last week my distraction was a pigeon that got a little too close for comfort. This week it was some exotic looking brown and white bird that swooped down just as we were concluding.

Jerry engaged the bird in conversation and coaxed it over our way. Hop, hop, hop it came within feet of us. Jerry told me to sit still, he wanted to see how close the bird would come.

Close, closer, and suddenly it was across my nice lime green exercise mat.

I found this close up of nature’s wonder fascinating until Jerry pointed out the obvious.

“Oh look,” Jerry observed, “the bird pooped on your mat.”

And Jerry wasn’t kidding. My immediate thought was whether or not I could boil my exercise mat.

But isn’t that the lesson of Life 101, that with the wonder and the miracle and the marvel, well with it comes the not so wonderful, the not so miraculous, the hardly marvelous, and inevitably, the cleanup?

This past Sunday afternoon was a double celebration. My cousin Chuck Shoup and his wife Ann celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary while at the same time their daughter Judy and husband Rich Dunne celebrated their 25th. Someone ordered the perfect fall day for the event and the gathering of friends and family had a brush of Norman Rockwell with white helium balloons in the air, youngsters under foot and babies in arms.

When we entered the restaurant where the party took place I noticed cousin David, Chuck’s brother, seated at the bar writing what appeared to be a greeting card. My Dad was famous for writing greeting cards at the actual event and I chuckled to myself that David was carrying on the tradition of photo finish card writing.

David was not writing a greeting card, instead he was penning one of the greatest toasts ever written.

For Judy and Rich, David went for the joy - for the laugh line. Judy and Rich had both been Sea Scouts when they married. He described the pageantry of their wedding - the Sea Scout union of the year. He congratulated them on bringing into the world three treasured daughters. Hear, hear.

But when the glasses were raised for Chuck and Ann, the toast was one of reflection. David noted that 50 years must yield both joy and sorrow. But then he went on to describe the most ordinary of events. He related how driving down the road one day that, by chance, he passed Chuck and Ann walking down the sidewalk. It was just the two of them, David said, and they were holding hands.

It that simple mental snapshot of a private moment caught unexpected, a lesson was taught, a marriage celebrated.

It can be rough out there in the park, birds get close, mats get soiled. That, it seems, is life.

But out there too, are friends and family, neighbors, cousins, spouses, children. There are hands to reach out to, hands to be held.

Hear, hear.