Sleeping In

/ roughwighting / 6 Comments

I can’t think of one good reason to sleep in. The idea of sleeping in makes me so uncomfortable my spine stiffens and I get a funny taste in my mouth.

I’m ashamed of this reaction. I have become one of those people – one of those overactive, overinvolved, overstimulated humans. Why else would I react in such a negative way to the idea of doing nothing on a beautiful, new, glorious early morning?

You see, if I sleep in, I don’t get my early morning walk with my dog along the waterfront, watching the fog swoop through the Golden Gate and swirl over Angel Island, pelicans diving in and out of the misty gray. On some mornings, this scene is what makes the day worth living.

The pulse of my blood, the stretch of my limbs, the smile on the golden’s wide mouth and the twirl of his happy tail. I would miss this if I slept in. As well as the warm sweet tea that my man delivers to me by 6:20 every weekday morning, with perfect milky foam and Earl Gray steaming into my olfactory senses. How could I miss this?

And then the ‘ting’ of the computer singing hello to me, the sweet greetings of East Coast friends and family who have been awake for three hours and already shared their thoughts and yearnings and news. I suppose that those messages would still be waiting for me if I slept in, but hours old. Old news.

Can I sleep in? Unfortunately many nights I can’t sleep past 3:30 a.m., much less 6 or 7 or, gasp, 8. When was the last time I ‘slept in’? Um, senior year of college? Noon, in my twin bed while my sleeping roommate slowing wakes up in her twin, dormitory noises outside the locked door, sun trying to peep through the gray blinds. Reliving out loud the crazy night before. Giggling, while struggling to not wake up.  But the door reverberates with knocks, “Get up you two, touch football on the green – girls are ahead of the boys, 6-2.” Roomie and I pop out of bed, vowing to never sleep in again and miss all the fun.

Sleeping in makes the day start too late. I’d miss the ‘me’ time, the delicate time between being in my own world, before joining the world of everyone else.

How about you?

A Solitary Surprise

/ roughwighting / 5 Comments

Ah, to be able to get away by myself and go for a long solitary walk while my houseful of guests chatter and demand my attention in their sweet, non-demanding ways.

“Have to take the dog for a walk!” I shout out. Leash in hand, dog giving me a wonderful excuse, I nearly leap off the front stoop and race toward the wooded path just a few yards away. The leaves are beginning to turn, so I’m surrounded by mostly green hues tinged with yellows, a sudden brilliant red, an aggressive spray of orange. My spirits lift, and I think alone at last, glory be.

But at the next step, I hear a tingling sound, like chimes, and as I follow the path, crunchy with fallen yellow birch leaves, the chiming becomes louder, more insistent.

Darn. My goal is to get away from civilization. What’s this? The dog’s ears perk up excitedly, and he drags me forward, even though I’d rather find another path.

Suddenly, we walk into a clearing where a small thatched-roof cottage sits unperturbed and peaceful. A curl of smoke rises from the chimney, and a glorious symphonic sound wafts from the open door. I step away, not wanting to disturb the occupant, but the dog races toward the door so excitedly that the leash pulls away from my hand.  He has crashed the party, so to speak.

His tail disappears from the front entryway into the cottage. Mortified, I step up closer, my nose twitching at the delightful smell of freshly baked butterscotch muffins. My favorite! How strange. I raise my hand to knock on the open door, but a voice, strong yet husky and strangely familiar, shouts out, “Come in, Pam. Come in.”

Prickles of surprise course up my spine into my scalp. I hear nothing from the dog. My stomach gurgles in hope, and my foot moves forward, despite my reservations.

I enter a room so cozy and soothing I want to sink into the nearest chair and stay forever. The space is filled with a few comfortable high-pillowed chairs and a loveseat covered in blue-flowered upholstery. The wood floor is covered with a soft blue chenille area rug.  Red pillows and soft cashmere throws add a colorful accent to the inviting room, infused with light from three, large-paned windows.

A figure stands in the far doorway that leads to the kitchen. I can’t identify her at first, she is bathed in afternoon light from the stained glass window that graces the top of the front door. But she moves slightly, and I gasp.

“Amazing, isn’t it?” she says lightly.

I stare at the image of myself, standing as still as a statue while I regain my bearings. She is tall, 5 feet 7, with wavy blonde hair dotted with graying streaks. Her gray green eyes are strong and direct, her full mouth pressed upward in a gentle smile.

It can’t be.

She is exactly what I look like. She moves her head back and forth, as if to discourage me from trying to understand this phenomenon, and then she points toward one of the chairs.

“Have a seat. Let me tell you a story about life, and how little we know of what and who we really are.”

I bolt out of that door faster than a rabbit released from a trap. Even while running, I ask myself, what am I so afraid of? Learning the truth? Or discovering that life has many divergent truths?

Either way, I’m a coward.

Ten minutes later, exhausted and out of breath, I stop. What have I done? I turn around, looking for the dog. He hasn’t followed me. He’s back there, at the cottage. I retrace my steps quickly, heart beating faster than I’ve ever allowed it to. My head spins with a thousand thoughts but only one question. Why did I run?

When I reach the spot, it is only a clearing with some low-hanging underbrush. No cottage. No smells of warm butterscotch muffins. No woman, and no dog.

I have lost my chance at discovery.

“Urf!” My dog is back, leashless, but smiling widely.

I agree with him. We have many solitary walks ahead of us, searching for that path to the answers.

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

Burnt Toast

/ roughwighting / 5 Comments

True, we were rushing.

“Hurry up!” I exclaimed to my man as he jumped into the shower. We’d told our friends we’d pick them up at 8:15 a.m. this past Sunday morning to get an early start to our 2-day hiking trip. We had all been getting to the point of feeling burnt out. A perfect time to get away, clear the cobwebs in our heads, and enjoy some fresh air in God’s country.

I pulled the lever down on my super-duper one-year-old stainless steel toaster in the kitchen, then dashed back to the bedroom where my suitcase was half packed. But I also cleaned up the dog’s hair on the chair (that he never sits on, oh no, never), closed the windows, made the bed, and jotted down notes for the dogsitter.

That’s when I smelled it. Burnt…toast? Then I saw the smoke swirling toward me, like a monster sneaking out of a blue lagoon. Only in this case, creeping throughout the condo.

Running back to the kitchen like a mad woman, I cringed at the smoke belching out of that newfangled toaster – and, did I see some flames too? I unplugged it, but then swore not so softly. An alarm was screeching so loudly that it could wake up our neighbors.

Wait. The screaming alarm didn’t come from our place, but from the outside hallway, connected to each of the six condo units. Shit, Shit, Shit.

I knocked on the bathroom door and walked in. “Um,” I said sweetly through the shower door, “we have a little problem.”

I quickly opened all the windows in every room of the condo on my way to our front door. Wait, I realized my attire was not appropriate for anyone other than the dog and the husband. Hurried to the closet, buttoned up a long winter coat, and opened the door to discover two neighbors, men who lived in two different units, standing in front of the offending alarm: one in his velour bathrobe, the other in tennis shorts so tiny they had to be from the 1970s. You know, Jimmy Connor-style.

I gulped, then apologized, “All my fault. Bad toaster.”

They couldn’t have been nicer. Or more understanding. Even when the fire truck roared up the driveway and three burly yellow-slickered, yellow rubber-booted firemen bounced out of the truck over to the alarm, where my shirtless, red-shorted husband now also stood, looking at the large clanging button as if wondering if a sledgehammer would shut it up.

Within minutes, the siren was killed and all six men stomped through our condo to check up on the smoke. Did you know that you should NOT open all the windows when smoke is inhaling every inch of the place? Now you do.

“Just open up one window, then it doesn’t go into every room,” the cute muscled younger-than-my-son fireman explained to me.” Then he stared at my winter coat.

It was 70 degrees outside.

I shrugged, they left, and our friends were still waiting for their pick up. I texted: “Burnt toast,” and they texted back. “Better than burnt out.  Breathe. Smile. Relax!”

And thus, the weekend began. 

Love Letters

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The rain fell softly as I curled up in front of my brother’s bedroom dresser and slowly opened the bottom drawer.

I was alone. My mom was down the street playing bridge with Mrs. Abbot, Mrs. Demmel, and Mrs. Poling. I could hear brother Chuck and his friend Ricky shouting at each other in the backyard as they enacted their own version of cops and robbers. Even at just 10 years old, I held onto these rare times of privacy like a drowning girl holding onto a life raft. I couldn’t articulate the need for time alone yet, but I certainly could relish it.

My skin prickled with anticipation and satisfaction. I stopped suddenly. A noise – something banging on the floor.

Oh, just the dog scratching an itch.

After opening the drawer as far as I could without its heavy weight falling on my legs, I pushed aside some winter sweaters and crawled my hands into the nest of wool, eyes unseeing, feeling for my secret pleasure. Yes, they were still there! A few weeks ago I had first discovered them, the old letters, hidden in a place my mom must have believed was safe from prying eyes.

Well, she was wrong.

I chuckled as I slipped out one packet of thin envelopes grouped together with a rubber band. This packet contained all the letters postmarked August, 1944. I opened the first one, an entire unknown world – released.

My dad’s love letters to my mother when he was in the war.

“The war” in my childhood household was WWII. My father had been barely 18 when he was shipped overseas. My mom lived with her parents, commuted to New York City for her job as a secretary, living for the time when she could race back home on the early evening train to see if another letter had arrived.

Most of these letters were from France, some from Germany. They said little about the war or my father’s life as a paratrooper, which was the boring stuff in my 10-year-old mind anyway. What I was most interested in, most astonished at, was the way my dad wrote about his love.

He described the times he and my mom kissed on the couch after my grandparents went to bed. About how he longed for her. How he missed her. How he couldn’t wait to get home to her. Almost every letter said the same thing. Sometimes he’d mention the atrocious food he and his ‘buddies’ ate from a can. Sometimes he complained that he had KP duty again, because he’d come back past the curfew, drunk. Those things surprised me, but I raced right past them, most interested in his romantic words of sexual love and longing.

Later that day, when the whole family sat down for dinner, I’d look across the dining room table at my dad and try to imagine him, writing those love letters.

But I never could.

My Dog Is a Zen Master

/ roughwighting / 10 Comments

I arrive home at lunchtime with a 30-minute break from work.  I am hassled and frazzled and tired.  I dump some leftovers in a saucepan while washing the breakfast dishes, starting a load of laundry, and cleaning up the newspapers scattered on the dining room table.

That’s when I see the patch of sunlight, and the yogi.

He can’t cross his legs as human meditators do, but instead sits like a Sphinx, front legs straight ahead, beautiful gold and white furry chest held straight and proud.  His neck rises a bit as he faces me and holds my green eyes into his chocolate brown ones. The expression is wise and all-knowing, and I can hear his thoughts immediately:

Why don’t you calm down, for heaven’s sake? 

The sun is basking his body in heat and light, and his mouth opens to pant.  But actually he is trying to say something to me, like:

Stop.   Look.  Listen.  Life is only this.  Stop.  Look.  Listen.

The timer buzzes, but I ignore it and sit down next to my dog, stroking the warm fur.  I feel the sun melt my tense muscles, my frayed nerves, and my buzzing brain.  I breathe deeply and . . .

Stop

Look

Listen

Slowly, I also become one with the day.

At least for a few minutes.