Not This Day

As I write this, he will be waking up, stretching his arms toward the headboard, grabbing his travel alarm clock, holding it close to his eyes as he squints to see the tiny hands telling him he has less time than he needs to get ready for his day. As he dangles his legs off the bed, shuffling his feet under it, looking for his slippers he left on the bathroom floor last night, the coffee maker will click on with a gurgle and steady stream of aroma drawing him to the kitchen, slippers forgotten, until the first cup of coffee revives his fuzzy mind. And as he pulls out his chair with a screech across the tile floor from the missing floor protector he has been meaning to replace for over a month now, and sits down only to rise again to retrieve the morning paper from the damp front lawn, where it always falls short of the front porch, it’s supposed intended target, and curses his bare feet and missing slippers, I will not come down the stairs and pour myself a cup of coffee waiting for my morning information fix. And he won’t notice this until after two cups. Maybe three.

His life revolves around a chaotic, scattered, frantic, highly organized and structured routine. He forgets the same things every day. Scatters the same belongings everyday. Misses the same appointments, calls the wrong calls, misplaces the same shoes, papers, remotes, glasses, books, magazines and car keys as he did the day before. This is his everyday, his usual, his normal way of getting things done, checking “to do’s” and “won’t get to’s” off his list, arranging today so he can go on to tomorrow. He strings his days together, sliding each aside as the sun fades, today covering up the day before, and the day before covering up the day before, before. Eventually, these spent days become crowded and cave in on one another. Strings become entangled and over time weave themselves into a thick mass, a veil, covering up all that was, wasn’t, should have and should never have been and he feels comforted by this blanket, this wall, protected and safe, and doesn’t notice a crack until it’s a gaping hole.

Once, when we were on holiday at the beach, was it Venus, or Long Boat Key, or maybe Captiva where we snorkeled on that amazing sand bar, the fish came up and took peas straight from our hands and when we came back two years later and had to stay on the other end of Sanibel and snuck on the trolley at South Seas Plantation, that was the day we drove through the the J. N. "Ding" Darling Refuge, and the guys at the beach laughed at us because we thought the sand bar would still be there, he decided he had to have a certain kind of cigar and spent the better half of our last day running around on that mission. That was the day after I waited for over an hour at the Mucky Duck. The local news station, our local, not theirs, was also there and he lost track of time shooting the breeze with the anchor guy, making drink dates for when we got back to the main land. I only mention this because he wouldn’t remember it and I have the pictures in front of me now.