It’s Friday afternoon of the holiday weekend and we’re all jammed together in the front office. Workmen are murmuring behind the closed door, their heavy footsteps traipsing from kitchen to bathroom. The water is turned off. My spouse Janyce is sitting at the desk, typing on her laptop, with her earbuds in her ears and talking, “Oh yes, yep,” she says. “Yes, events, right. I was just going to ask that!”
Her one-sided commentary from her Zoom meeting is not really capturing my attention, I simply notice certain words she says from where I’m sitting on the couch. The windows are cracked open a bit, and a crisp breeze from outside slides in along with the sunlight filtering through the woods. Now it’s dancing on the window pane. Now it’s flickering on the rug. I have my feet up on the wicker coffee table, littered with Harvard and Yankee magazines, and a title nine catalog with a corner of the page folded over. Janyce has left behind a book she is reading called The First 90 Days and my foot is resting on top of it as I scroll through email from the computer on my lap. Our dog is sleeping on her bed against the wall, her head resting on the bolster.
I don’t quite know what to do with myself today. It’s a beautiful day out and I’m still in my workout clothes from this morning’s class. I have an endless list of chores. But who does chores on the start of Labor Day weekend? I could call my ex-husband and ask him to join me on a dog walk. I could empty the refrigerator and wipe down the shelves and then put everything back again. Or I could sit here instead and do nothing but be in this room with Janyce and our sleeping dog while I watch the sunlight move across the floor.
Swirls lets out a long, loud snore and her back leg begins to twitch.
One of the workmen knocks on the door and I hear Janyce excuse herself from her meeting to talk with him. I could just as easily meet with the workmen myself, but usually I don’t.
“I hope your epsom salt baths are worth the 200 dollars,” she says, coming back in the room to join her meeting again.
I look up.
“Oh no, was it caused because of my baths?” I say.
“I’ll tell you about it once I’m off the call. No. It wasn’t. I’m just kidding with you,” she says, and then turns her attention back to the screen.
The other day, Janyce and I took Swirly out for a walk on the sidewalk of our busy street. We went the other way, the way we never go, and just meandered. It was the middle of the afternoon and the sun was hot. My ex-husband Jim waved to us from the car as he passed us, probably on his way to the disc golf course down the road. We kept trodding along, talking about the houses we were passing, and eventually we stopped in front of a sunny yellow one with a giant red hibiscus bush in bloom and a wooden library box in front. I grabbed a paperback book written by Elizabeth Strout.
When we got back I opened it and the very first few lines of the book read:
I would like to say a few things about my first husband William. William has been through some very sad events— many of us have—but I would like to mention them, it feels almost a compulsion; he is seventy-one years old now.
“Can you believe I picked this book, randomly, from a free library book box,” I said to Janyce as we stood in the driveway with the dog about to enter the house. I can’t remember now if she answered me, but I instantly started to read it and devoured it over the next two days. My ex-husband Jim is 71 now, too. And there are so many parallels in the story to my own. But also, I just like the way this writer made the most boring details in a life worth reading.
“Let’s take the dog and walk down to the farmer’s market,” I say. I talk over Janyce who is on her cellphone now, leaving a message for the Tree guys, ticking off yet another item on her to-do list.
The other night we met a local friend at the cafe in the center of town. We had salads with grains and berries and a craft cocktail while we laughed and talked. A guitarist was roaming around the tables playing instrumental versions of popular songs. People were relaxed and chatting with each other in groups. Nobody was on their phone. Later as we were leaving, our friend offered to give us a ride home.
“No thanks, I said. “We’ll walk. It’s such a nice night out.”
I’ve been liking how our suburban town has a bit more to offer lately. A few cafes, a lively center common with food trucks and local musicians. Now that we work from home more, we have the time to walk into town and actually look at things as we pass. Our ordinary town feels a bit better. But is it really that different than it was before? Maybe we are.
Janyce is off the phone now. “I’m ready to go if you are,” she says walking over to me still holding her laptop in her hand. “Or we can choose our dates for the Cape house next year?”
Swirly is instinctually aware of the time and is now up off her bed poking her wet nose against my legs signaling to me that it’s 4pm. At 4pm she eats her dinner and after her dinner she goes on a walk again and after that maybe she will sit in the yard and guard the perimeter for rabbits. There’s an order to the way the day is structured.
“Let’s do that later,” I say. “Let’s head out to the common first for some vegetables. And we’ll come back and make a salad and the spinach pie we still have in the refrigerator,” I say.
And a fire in the solo stove. And maybe we’ll see the owls, and maybe we’ll end the night with a bowl of popcorn and a movie. I think all this silently to myself. It’s the ordinary order of how things will unfold for the rest of the night at the start of a holiday long weekend. And it’s all okay with me.
I love the energy of slowing down
a nice ordinary kind of day.