today and the today after that

So many things are constant and never-changing to keep the day in balance with all that is unexpected. Since I don’t yet know the unexpected parts, I can’t write about them. They are material for a future blog, one that will be about something concrete, like spotting an interesting red flower growing at the edge of the yard, or having dinner with our friends Joe and Holly last night, and wishing I could drink a glass of wine to go with the pot roast Holly made for us. But those are unexpected things, and they are in a different category.

The expected things are those that I always just “know,” that never throw me off guard. Usually I don’t stop to appreciate them, and I guess that’s the way it happens that people start to take things for granted...

I know that when I wake up each morning and sit in my yellow chair by the sunroom window, I will look across the room to see a cage draped with a white sheet, and I know underneath that sheet (once I pull it away as if revealing a magic trick) there will be Sam, our dog, curled up in mounded blankets. I know that when I open the cage door, he’ll walk out slowly, taking his time and stretching each leg as he goes. He will give himself a little shake (as if after a bath) to remind himself that he’s awake. Sam is not a morning person either, and we understand each other like that.

Sam will move slowly toward the back door, and Mia will swat him with her paw on the back as he passes. I like to think of it as her way of giving him a morning high-five, though her eyes tells me she means something else entirely.

I know that Jeremy will be wearing his blue bathrobe, drinking coffee from his over-sized Starbucks mug that he uses every day. I know there will be various size 10 shoes tossed about and un-paired, and I know that I will trip over them a lot, making me wish I had a set of eyes on the bottom of my chin with which to better see the ground.

I know that I will anticipate the mail. I always do, and check it three or four times throughout the afternoon, turning the little silver key in the lock of the old-fashioned brass box attached to a porch post. And I know that I will glance up and see the grimy remnants of that robin’s next atop the post and think, “we really need to wash that off.”

I know that I will open the refrigerator door and find something to eat, that I will make the bed, hear the cat purr, line up glasses in the dishwasher, and use my fingers to type. I know that within a day I will feel both insecure and peaceful, that at some point I will give my husband and hug and feel thankful, but later squinch my eyebrows at him when I trip over another shoe. And it makes me wonder if I would know one without the other.