simplelsie lay your head

down upon your morning bed.

Some days stand out from the many ordinary days that our lives are made up of.  If it's a lucky day something wonderful has happened--a birth, a coveted prize, won, a love-filled fantasy day.  Others stand out because of cold confrontation with bad fortune or, even worse, tragedy.  Today was a day that stood out from most of my days but not because of good fortune or bad luck.  It just felt different.

Today was skewed slightly from an ordinary day.  Fatigue, buzzing in my heads made my movements through my daily life feel like the slowmotion floating one does in a dream.  Time was elastic.  Half hours disappeared and minutes lengthened so that the spaces between the ticks and the tocks of the livingroom clock seemed to take their own time, instead of real time. Everyday chores,  tedious because of their constant need to be done, the monotonous nature of repeated maintenance, today were made interesting because they could not be done mindlessly.  Washing dishes and driving shared the renewal of having to have their details attended to instead of performed mindlessly while using other distractions to pacify my need for stimulation.  With a brain unable to predict what other drivers would do, I had to really watch other cars move and depend more on what I saw instead of what a better rested me would expect.  With a day stripped of ambition to accomplish the extras, I listened to what people were saying, instead of just hearing the tone and knowing the content.

Tonight I went outside to fetch teenagers from the mall and drive them home.  Because today was not a day to process the past or worry about the future, because today was a day I needed every functioning part of my reason just to take the current step and listen to this word, tonight I saw the night.

And because I saw it, I stopped and was in it.  In the cool clear air.  In the dark.  Lights on houses and shining from windows shone more purely than I remembered.  The starts really were suspended in air, not flattened against the sky.  So quiet.  So beautiful.  Serenity.

The girls got picked up ten minutes late tonight.  If I weren't  walking around in this protective suit of fatigue, I would have been early as I usually am.  But I wouldn't have had this skewed standout night to remember.  I would have missed it if I were in my Superfunctioning Supermom cape.

We Simple folk live in a fairly small house that isn't arranged in a clump of convivial accesiblity, but rather stretches with space for people to enjoy some quiet solitude or deafening musical chaos, whichever appeals to the Simple at the moment.  Young Simples get away with all manner of mischief without my ever knowing what they are up to and I can tuck myself out of the way of petty demands.   It is probably the only way we can stand each other.

Today we were inside, out of a unnerving wind and  taking full advantage of the linear floorplan when the floor shook, accompanied by a solid WHUMP!  This is not the remarkable occurance at my house that it might be in other peoples' houses;  we shake and whump! more that most.  This shake and WHUMP!, however, were emphatic enough  that even young Parker the Chaotic was moved to call out to his sister, "What was that?"  When I heard him ask I knew he didn't cause the impact.  He was my first thought when I heard it.  When she replied she didn't know, I knew that this was not one of our usual people-sourced disturbances.  On our feet and moving in all directions, finding the house in no more than its usual state of disorder,  we were puzzled.  Then Parker said, "Maybe a tree blew over."

Oh, I hoped not.  My yard is the only reason I've ever found to own a house.  It isn't a noteworthy landscape, but it's where my heart is happiest.  Some women love their kitchens and the nothin' says lovin' like the work they do there.  Some women love to nest near the fireplace, a good book in their hands and a cat on their laps.  I love to go out and try to get something to grow this summer that wasn't there last summer.  I indulge my passion for whatever color my eyes fancy at this moment by planting a flower.  It is quiet.  If I never lifted a finger in the yard I would still love tall trees and the plants and the air and the smell of outside and it would still be my peaceful retreat.  We went to take a look.

It only took a moment to see the wall lying there.  Not a tree which would have cut through the  through the sedum in narrow  slice, but the open block wall that shelters part of the patio from the view of neighbors and sharp eyed high school students walking between the houses to to school every day.  The  8 foot tall wall that crushed every plant on the west side of the house.  The sedums,the peonies, the bee balm that made its first return visit to the yard this spring, my columbine, the primula, the clematis, the bleeding hearts and roses that were planted two owners ago.  Those and the plants I can't remember the names of and the ones I can't even remember planting are under the wall.  That damn wall which, if you'd never actually been to Italy and if you squinted and imagined and played really beautiful music and had a glass of wine sitting in the space it enclosed, it would let you delude yourself into thinking that maybe you were in Italy or that at least you'd get there someday, but this wasn't too bad in the meantime.  The wall which is still intact, one length of concrete lace lying on its side in the flower bed and leaving exposed the fernbed that depended on it for shade.

And then Bob made a smart remark.  Not a comforting, mood-lightening remark, but a smart-alecky, mean remark  And then another one.

This entry is being made at the library.  A wall came down.  A different kind went up.

*************************

Three hours later--Well, I have a general policy not to delete entries once I make them, even if I am somewhat embarrassed by them.  Deleting an entry is kind of like disguising myself, I guess.  And if you have to disguise yourself while you are already faceless, well, then other people aren't the people being misled.  One is misleading oneself.  I do have pompous virtue on my side, don't I?

I will add a note about another part of my day.

I was on my way to workout at the Y, and Mendelssohn's Violin Concerto in E minor was blaring. the current selection in my car's CD player.  Anyway, the volume was turned waaaay up because I like it that way.  Even so, the navy blue auto part delivery vehicle next to me at the stop light was projecting some rather heavy rock  though my closed windows.  I looked over and saw a young man slouched in the truck, leaning over so far to the right  that his raised  left knee was visible through the window.  Head back, eyes closed, he was singing along to the loud thumping music, looking oblivious to the noise he was broadcasting into my car.  Head bobbing,  shoulders moving.  The man was loving that loud pumping thumping music.  I turned off my CD player. 

As I watched, the happily siinging driver lifted his air guitar high.  The instrument was so large his hand extended out the open space above his window and he started plucking the notes with his right hand.   Music blaring.  Man singing and swaying and playing his invisible Les Paul guitar.  The light was still red and I thought OK, why not?   I lowered the window on the passenger side and yelled something to him.  He looked at me, hesitated, then turned down the music and his window.  With cheerful resignation he gave me a chance to repeat my complaint.  So I raised my voice again and repeated myself. 

"What are you listening to ?"

"Candlebox."  He replied, smiled.  "You've got the green arrow."

"Thanks," I said.  And I took off.

Upon awakening this morning to the world we live in and looking outside to a beautiful day and hearing the sleep of the people in my house and having the day stretch ahead with negligible chance of being bombed, shot, tortured, confined, intimidated, starving to death, or watching my children starve to death,

with no need to call the oncology unit at Children's Hospital or visit my mother anywhere else but in her home,

with friendships that hold firm and support during times of distress

I think I can handle a tumbled over wall and some crushed flora.

Suzie Sunshine is back in the house.

Today I saw "Hellboy" with a 12 year old.

Mother's Day had better be spectacular this year.

Here we are on the threshold of the new week.  Lots to do, lots of time to do it in.

Rats.  I don't feel like doing any of it.  Here is what I do feel like doing:

I would liketo take my alarm clock and clocks in general than thro it/them out.  Not in the trash can I can see from the house either.  I mean OUT!

Hmmmm.  On second thought,  all clocks may remain right where they are.  I would like to get out of here.  I would like to check into a comfortable hotel--oooohh, I like La Meridian in Chicago, so comfortable, such nice people, so soothing and restful.  Yes, I'm definitely going to check into La Meridian and throw all of their clocks out;

Then I'm going book shopping.  I'm going to get wonderful books, a big teetering stack of them and have a literary-type lackey deliverthem to my room, no, my suite at La Meridian.  They will be waiting for me when I get back.  Then Iam going to have a stack of CD's sent over, anything I want including all of those things I haven't been able to find as well as the ones I find but then think, "Should I really buy something because I like one song on it?  Maybe the other ones are bad."  Well, I'm getting them now, you overrational, fiscally responsible me.  And have one of those Bose thingies sent over too.  And some good movies.  Nothing deep, nothing depressing, just funny or amusing or interesting;

OK, some nice clothing is next on the list.  All beautiful, all my favorite colors, who cares what the price tag says?  What price tag?  I didn't see one, did you?  All for me, none for the kids, none for the spouse, just for me me me me me me me;

(I'm dancing around the room now, totally happy and deranged.)

And then a wonderful pedicure.  And a great haircut, ok, I'll do that manicure/facial/whatever thing you've got as well.

OK, back to LaMeridian.  I'll see you again sometime...maybe.  Maybe not, yes, probably not.  My name?  I think I left it somewhere.  I forget exactly where that was.

It's election day today!  Big doin's in Bfield.  There are two items on the ballot.  The first is to elect members of the school board and the other has to do with how many days of the week we Bfeldians can conflagrate our leaves in our yards.  A huge turnout is expected.