On mornings and memorials
time to make the most of what we have
Sunday morning. We’re drinking coffee, and watching the bluebirds take turns entering and exiting the birdhouse at the far edge of the backyard.
“You know that I’m sitting right in front of the crossbar to this window and it’s blocking my view,” I say to my spouse Janyce as I’m sipping coffee. I have my feet up on the ottoman.
“Yes, dear,” she says.
“This window doesn’t work for me, as big as it is,” I say.
“Yes, I know that. We’re going to change it,” she says.
“We should change it right now. I want to call Anderson Windows today.”
I’m scrolling through my Instagram and sending screenshots of the wedding to my friends in the text chat.
The tangle of vines that cover the backyard fencing is a haze of orange, lit by the sun. The very beginning of green leaves have yet to unfurl but they seemingly sprung up overnight in this last rainfall. I filled the feeders this morning in my pajamas after I had left them empty for over a week and all the birds arrived within seconds. Two pairs of bluebirds, the woodpeckers, nuthatch, finches and titmouse. A week ago, when I was sitting at the kitchen table with my laptop, a chickadee bombed my head on the other side of the glass. It stopped for a moment on a branch of the bush, looked right at me in the window, and chirped. I knew it was asking nicely for the feeders to be filled again.
I’m not really going to call Anderson’s today and Janyce knows this. Our window is fine for now. I can move my chair.
“Did you know that our almond milk is only $3.98 a carton at Walmart?” says Janyce.
“Mmhmm,” I say.
Swirls can’t stand us for one minute longer. We’ve promised her a walk and we’re both on our computers puttering. She jumps up to maul us, frantically licking our faces before finally giving up and settling on the bench in front of the window with a long sigh, her nose hanging off the side and pointed toward the floor. Come to think of it, I can’t stand us a minute longer either. There are days when I feel as old as Methuselah, which is hilarious to me because I don’t have a religious bone in my body. It just sounds perfect to say this. But seriously, maybe it’s all the weddings right now. All the kids getting married mixed in with all the memorials.
The text chat pings on my phone with one heart emoji after another. Everyone is responding to the photo of Steven I posted, copied from the Instagram story. My late friend Sandy’s only child, a man now, is wrapped in a prayer shawl, his hands clasped with Nicole’s on a beach in Mexico. The sun is setting bright orange over the water. I’m thinking about beginnings and endings, and time passing. My aunt turned 80 while I was eating wedding cake in honor of Steven and swapping Sandy stories with a group of friends over brunch. Another friend of mine lost his beloved 95-year-old grandfather on this same day. I read the beautiful obituary he wrote out loud to Janyce while I was sitting in the passenger seat looking at my cellphone and she was driving.
Early yesterday morning on my way back from the gym, I turned the radio up loud in the car to listen to “Clocks.” I came into the house humming the tune.
“When was the last time we listened to Coldplay?” I said to Janyce.
“A Rush of Blood to the Head is one of the greatest albums of all time,” she said, while searching for the Coldplay song on her phone. Soon we were both listening to the repetitive piano riff blaring through our living room speakers. I’m not sure what Chris Martin is singing about. The lyrics read like a poem full of ambiguity, but there is an overall urgency to the music and some beautiful lines that evoke the idea of time passing, and making the most of the time we have.
We’re back from taking a leisurely stroll for a couple of hours with some friends. It was the perfect way to spend the rest of our Sunday morning and now our dog is blissfully napping on her chair. I’m about to hit post and get back to my homework, a writing assignment that is due by 11:59 pm, but not before I geek out some more with Rick Beato and what makes this Coldplay song so great. Take a listen.