May
9
May 9, 2006
There was a spider in my bathroom when I went to take a shower, I meant to sweep it from the ceiling but forgot, and the next time I looked it was gone. That’s okay, spider. You keep your distance, I’ll keep mine.
Contractors came to our house and started hammering, the sound echoed down the hall and JB said I can’t believe Riley is still asleep and I said I can’t believe it either and we ate breakfast and I read the comics pages and finally walked down to listen outside Riley’s door and I heard a quiet steady rattle as he turned a toy over and over and the hushed vowelly sounds of his contented babble and I opened the door and dramatically stepped in and I said Well HELLO and he turned his bright face towards me and smiled with his entire body.
Who’s a wriggly, I asked him. You’re a wriggly. You are. Yes.
It was sunny and cool and the shaded cement floor chilled my bare feet when I stepped into the carport to take out the trash. A pair of starlings chattered at me from the overhead power line, a truck ground and grumbled nearby, my son pressed a button on a toy from inside the house and through the open door I could hear the furrow of concentration in his brow. Ba, he said. Da.
His father bundled him into the truck with the bag of bottles and jars of food and I said have a good day, JB said you too and we kissed and I said bye Riley, bye. The house was strange and echoey in their wake, washcloths and toys and bibs strewn as if from a great height, but I could take my time now and so I did, stood in front of the mirror and bared my teeth in a sharky grin and looked at my face, the tiny radiating creases around my eyes and mouth, the bacon-spatter of freckles, and it was familiar and okay – let’s shake hands, face – and I slid on some lipstick in a shade called plumsicle and carefully blotted with a piece of tissue and left a plum-colored artifact of myself behind, crumpled.
I drove down a street in my neighborhood flanked by wetlands and the car in front of me screeched to a stop, the car next to that one braked and did a fast jog around something in the road and I slowed in time to see a mother duck waddling busily across the pavement, and bumbling behind her were at least seven baby ducklings, yellow-speckled and tufty with new feathers and moving in a disorganized line that compressed and expanded as they hurried to keep up, stepping on the backs of each other’s feet and holding their tiny wings out as if for balance.
I crossed the 520 bridge and the sky looked like a production cell lifted from The Simpsons; oblong white clouds formed entirely of Bezier curves, pressed flat against a Prussian blue backdrop.
I was playing Liz Phair and it was early and my voice was scratchy from too many cups of coffee and I sang the lyrics (watching the lake turn the sky into blue-green smoke) in perfect pitch, low and level, and I stopped at a red light and for a second I turned my head slightly so the person in the next lane wouldn’t see my mouth moving, but then I noticed she was singing, too. I thought, what if she is listening to the exact same music, queued to the exact same moment, her mouth forming the exact same phrase as I am (in 27-D, I was behind the wing), wouldn’t that be something. And the light turned and we all drove forward.
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Thank you for my zen moment of the day.
That’s brilliant.
i loved this post…. so visual
I wish I could write like you can. :-)
Beautiful.
lovely
thanks-
That was lovely. And Stratford-on-Guy is one of my favorite songs ever.
You = talented. Thanks for sharing it with us.
Thank you. I just finished “The Elephant Vanishes,” and this made me think of that. You are that good (if not better. No shit.)
Beautifully written, thanks for a lovely start to my day :)
a book – seriously…you MUST write a book
I got a chill when I started reading it- like there was bad news coming. Wow. I don’t like spiders.
poetry!
Please post every hour…you make my forced hours in front of a computer tolerable.
Beautifully written. I feel like I just eavesdropped on your stream of consciousness. *tiptoeing away quietly*
breaking out the pretty words! wonderful.
I felt like I was right there, what a great morning.
Gorgeous….
Thanks for reminding me to stop, be in the moment and appreciate life. And thanks for the window on your lovely morning.
Thanks, Sundry. That was a really nice ending to my not-so-nice workday!
Just beautiful. Thanks.
I think you are the best writer in the blogosphere.
That’s a fact.
Nicely written. It’s days like those, observations of a life, that paint the most vibrant pictures.
Wow. That was awesome! I love your writing
Also Wow! Thanks for that.
Reading that was like diving into a warm pool- very relaxing. Thank you for that.
I don’t get it.
Just kidding, but I was waiting for the spider to jump out from behind a door or something… with a knife, or something.
Nice. I’ll let this be the last before bed.
Dude, this was so what I needed after this day of cancer scares, cat poop and crappy doctors. Thank you.
I love when my son talks to himself as he plays in his crib. I always wish I could understand what he is saying. Wishing you many more mornings like this one.
That made me happy. So very good. Thank you.
How lovely and poetic. You’ve inspired me.
I read this yesterday just before my long train ride home from work, and was inspired to dust off the liz phair… so thank you for the beautiful writing and for making my commute far better than normal.
no singing over here, though. safer for everyone.
That was grand. Just grand. You know what I love!? That reading your blog is free. It’s like being going to the public library and reading the best book on the shelf. Go you.
Those were some cool descriptions. It’s neat, knowing how observant you are.
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