An Ordinary Day

I danced around the kitchen to some catchy dance club beat while I seared and prepped a pot roast for dinner. I was trying to concentrate on the task at hand (...and getting my boogie on), but my mind kept slipping back to words whispered in the dark before sleep the previous night. I'd nudged my husband, "You awake?" I whispered. "Barely," he grunted. "Do you ever feel as if your life has been broken down to eat, work, eat, sleep, repeat?" I asked. "What," he said, sounding more awake. I repeated the question to his resonating sigh. I could hear his brain turning over the words, "Seriously? NOW is when you want to have this discussion," but he humored me. "Yes, nearly every day Monday through Friday," he declared dismissively, the unspoken, "Now go to sleep" hanging in the darkened room. His answer made me sad.

As I lay awake turning it over in my mind, I thought about most people's ordinary days, my own included. People in, say, war-torn countries have ordinary days that probably resemble my worst nightmares and the ordinary days of people who live in third world countries, with no access to electricity or clean water, well, those lives are difficult for me to even wrap my brain around. I don't spend my days wondering from one moment to the next when I will eat, or how I will survive. I feel the press of heavier things pushing at my insides like some crushing weight and tears escape, unbidden, unwanted. Not my problem, I think, not my life, and as my husband would say, "not your bags to carry". And yet, carry them I do, especially when my "ordinary" can turn into rote boredom, while I forget to appreciate every single scrap of a blessing I possess (and I'm not talking about "things" here).

So, I let the wash of more dance music pour over me and move as if I am the only person left in the world, trying to shake free a maudlin that is not my concern. I look down, and there on my shoe is one scrap of lone onion stuck soundly to the top! This makes me laugh and laugh, till tears again run down my face from the absurdity of the moment. I thought to myself, Yeah here's your "sexy onion girl", baby! Whatever! I am grateful for my ordinary days and achingly aware of the fact that millions of people, perhaps even more, would give almost anything to have them. If I could wave a magic wand and make it so, I would. RIGHT now! Instead, all I can do is dance, be grateful, and hope with my whole heart that someday humanity will actually embrace the humane, and each other.