Empty

Normally at 6:15 a.m. I have been up for an hour; I am showered and dressed and messing with my face and my hair, attempting to create some imagined, organized version of myself to present to the world at large and my colleagues and friends at work.  By 6:45 I've either approached some semblance of my imagination, or thrown in the the towel with a loud, "Screw it!" to the mirror and those disobedient strands of baby-fine nonsense lying criss-cross over my forehead and getting caught in the hinges of my glasses. 
The next order of business is to wake up my eight year old grandson who lives with us weeknights during the school year.  I am careful not to startle him; I have always hated abrupt awakenings myself. I am not quiet by nature, but I make every attempt each morning to use my "inside voice" as I urge him into consciousness with the same greeting: "Good morning, little man" and I rub his legs and feet.  He is spoiled, in some ways.  I warm up a pair of socks in the dryer before rousing him, and slide them on his feet so they don't hit the cold bathroom tile unprotected.  When he's ready to wash his hands, I make sure the water is not cold.  His preferred temperature, if you ask him, is "warmish-coolish."  He stands in front of the sink, eyes still closed, and hangs his hands there until I tell him the temp is just right, at which point he washes them and uses his own Memphis Grizzlies hand towel, dubbed The Growl Towel, to dry them.  He dresses and makes his breakfast choice, which is almost always a scrambled egg with cheese; sometimes he cooks it and sometimes I do.  We go about the business of packing up everything that goes in the car: the backpack, the chess set on Tuesdays and basketball clothes on Wednesdays and Fridays, and my bag, my water bottle, and my coffee.  As we prepare to leave, we check everything-is the hall light off, is the stove off, is Susie's coffee cup out and next to the pot, and are his shoes tied?  He holds the security door open as I close the front door and lock it, and we're off.  Normally.
Right now, the school clothes are folded neatly in the drawers, it doesn't stink of gym shoes and squished snacks, long forgotten in the bottom of the backpack.  There are no plastic super heroes in my tub, no Legos underfoot, and no piles of paper to be signed and returned tomorrow.
And the bed.  It's clean, smooth, neat, and empty.  And 6:15 has lost its luster.

Endless

At times when I am out each morning clearing my head and stretching my legs, my eyes are downcast.  In our lovely neighborhood, filled with modest houses cheek-to-jowl, there are many places where the sidewalk is uneven.  At 68, I cannot take the chance of falling.  I look down and scan the sidewalk for bumps, gaps, stones, or any other flaw that might send me careening onto the pavement, ungraciously and potentially with horrible consequences. Who among us can afford the risk?  The thought of needing medical care right now is dreadful to me.

As soon as I am assured of my safety, I return to reviewing the houses, flowering trees and bushes, Little Free Libraries, and other landmarks that I have set for myself to gauge how long or far I have walked.  I almost always have earphones in, with a podcast going, but from time to time I pull them out, stuffing them deep in a pocket, so I don't miss the sounds of the cardinals, so abundant in our trees.  Every time I hear one, I try to find the source of the call.  I stop, turning my face skyward, scouring the branches above me for that speck of brilliant red, darting madly from limb to limb, or perched confidently among the leaves.  The trees in our city, ubiquitous and old, are legendary; we boast the largest virgin forest in any city in the country, and by my house, the century-old pin oaks create a spectacular view through which to enjoy the endless blue sky on a spring morning when the only other things that seem endless are isolation, distance, and trips to the refrigerator.

I know that there will come a time when this is the big, historical event we all use as a frame of reference.  We will pin our memories around this time, the way we have with other catastrophic events.  For now, however, I feel stuck in the sameness: worried about my family, resentful of the consequences, and longing to hold my grandchildren.

Yet somehow, each day, the mere chirp of a vivid red bird can ground me and center me and remind me that upward will always be the way for me to look.

Dogwood

When I was in my 20s, my father was hospitalized for a month following a brush with death.  The hospital to which he was taken was about a 30 minute drive from my home, up the Merritt Parkway in Fairfield County, Connecticut.  It was May, and in the 1970s, May was springtime in New England, although that has moved much earlier in the calendar now. The dogwood trees lining both sides of the parkway, alternating white and pink, were in their absolute glory;  just budding, really, at the beginning of his stay, but in full, burst-open beauty as the weeks passed.  They extended past the exit onto the road on which the hospital was located, and my memory of it is that the weather was spectacular nearly every day. We knew he would recover, so the drive to visit him daily was not frightening; I never worried that we would arrive to find some ominous sign like the blinds in his room being closed or the door with a foreboding notice on it, but it was troublesome nonetheless.  The trees made the routine more bearable.

He was a brilliant man, and funny and sarcastic and handsome.  Although small in stature at only 5'7" and probably 145 lbs., he was an enormous personality with a deep, resonant voice.  He was charming beyond measure; he had a deep, rich history of being respected and loved as a boss, and women were completely taken with his looks and his success, my mother most of all.  She had the added pleasure of having snagged him at a very early age.  She was not, however, amused in the least by how his charm and intelligence had engaged his doctors;  she thought his near death and the resultant hospitalization would "teach him" to treat his body better and perhaps straighten up and fly right.  When my sister and I would visit him, he would boast about how the doctors had remarked on his wit and mental acuity, and how the other inmates, as he called them, were in awe of his clever tongue, to the point where we would roll our eyes so hard they nearly burst from their sockets.  Over the four weeks he was there, we saw progress in his recovery, and were hopeful that he would return home to my mother, behave himself, and quit worrying all of us.  

In the mid-south, where I live now, it is dogwood season.  Their lacy branches filter the light in the yards, dappling the azaleas and hydrangeas with sunlight, and nearly glowing against the deep blue sky in the early morning light when I am out walking.  It's been over 40 years since that time, my father has been dead for more than 25 years, and yet there isn't a single day that I see those trees and am not transported to the drive back and forth, and connected again with the man who shaped me in so many ways.