Some days are meant to be memorable. A wedding maybe, that first dinner in Paris, the day you laid eyes on the Grand Canyon. But some aren't. They're slated to be ordinary and normal and yet, at the end of it all, they stay in your head. They mark a passage of time, or a change that took place, or a feeling that sprung like the first crocus in spring. And some stand out because inadvertently, they turn out to be dividers: everything that happened before and everything that happened after. People think of a cancer diagnosis in this way: all my life before that day and all my life after. I suppose you could add other grim news into that batch. But joyous ones too: all my days before I met X (name your best friend or your love), and all the days after.
I think of last Friday as an inadvertently memorable day. One that sticks in my mind, even though it really was ordinary! And yet -- memorable in its beautiful ordinariness. A marker of the celebration of ordinariness. So that when Ed notices that I added a new mug to the dish rack and asks me about it, I smile and say -- that was from a lunch on that ordinary Friday that I celebrate for its innocent simplicity. And when I eat the last pastry, purchased in the morning of that day I smile again: the modesty of that moment, purchasing it then, stands out to me.
Hey, did I not work in the garden before breakfast? Well, minimally so. The weeds have taken over most of the flower fields and though I had intended to clean up at least some of that mess, it's too buggy to do it in any enjoyable way. So I snip a little, pull a tiny bit and then move on.
Ed thought I needed a few days where I can take a deep breath and concentrate on just lovely things that are so easy to find all around us. He proposed that today we do a bike ride to the village of Paoli and from there, that we make our way to a swim hole that he discovered when kayaking in the Sugar River last week. He said it was sandy and deep and it may offer a pleasant swimming opportunity. I'm game!
Paoli had been the first destination for me with my new e-bike and back then (what, maybe two weeks ago) it took us an hour and twenty minutes to bike each way. This time, an intersection construction that slowed us down, was nearly done so walking the bikes took no time at all, and, too, we stuck with the Military Ridge trail for a chunk of the ride, avoiding many of the hills leading up to Paoli. That cut back the travel time each way to one hour and two minutes!
At Paoli, he led the way to the path that would take us down to the river banks. And then he went swimming.
It did not tempt me at all. The water was murky and deep and my knee is not ready for swimming in water that goes way over my head. But I watched and smiled at the childish pleasure one gets in swimming in a churning river.
(back on the bikes)
Returning through Paoli we stopped at the Creamery Cafe and shared an egg sandwich ...
... and then we biked home.
How tired am I from all those weeks of little sleep and hyped up activities and childcare and everything else in between? So tired that for the second day in a row I slept the afternoon away on the couch.
I woke up ready for another Zoom call with a friend who lives way too far for my liking.
And Ed prepared tomatoes for the freezer. Each day he picks at least twice this amount. We have way too many tomatoes!
Ed thought that a dinner out would be just the ticket (a rare offer -- we aren't the "eat out" type), but the place he suggested had no available tables, so we put it off 'til tomorrow and ate leftovers tonight. Deliciously easy. I whipped up a Nina-groni -- my own take on the classic Negroni -- and exhaled.
with love...
