grateful for just another day
After a crusty-eyed morning and a day sailing through my nine to five, I arrive at my front door with the resolve to enjoy my evening. As always, I’m greeted by my cat, Romulus, as I open the front door. Our ritual then is for him to run to the side room off the kitchen and roll on the carpet while I pet him. I then get down on the ground and let him rub his face against mine. I tell him how much I’ve missed him (which is always so much). He then receives his second meal of the day - I scoop his wet slop into his food bowl which is shaped like an orange fruit, and he meows with excitement in a way that sounds vaguely like a duck quacking.
I move upstairs to decompress and veg. I snack on tender white popcorn and watch half an episode of Vanderpump Rules. This ritual is one that I used to practice in my youth - every day after school I would eat a snack and watch tv with my sisters. After I turned 13 I would add a cup of coffee to the mix, loaded with french vanilla creamer and sugar - the way my Nana liked it. It was a comfort I didn’t realize I would one day miss. Always feeling like just another day, another afternoon, until now. I think of those days of watching Gilmore Girls or Spongebob in comfortable silence with two of my favorite people. Nostalgia bites at my tear ducts knowing things will never be the same, but I carry on the tradition nonetheless.
I dethaw the chicken for dinner by placing it in a bowl and running cool water over it in a constant stream. I shower and think. Some of my best thoughts come to me in the shower. I think about that and how when I was depressed I saw a shower as a means to an end instead of a ritual of self care. I think about how that was the root of my problem - I never took the time to care for myself. I was stinky and depressed … and I laugh to myself at the thought. I have other revelations I swear to myself I’ll write down, but forget to.
I lather myself in coconut scented body butter, I spray my freshly lotioned body with my new favorite perfume - Caffe Amore by Mancera. It smells exactly as I would imagine myself to naturally smell. Top notes of coffee and amaretto, middle notes of ice cream and vanilla, base notes of brown sugar, vanilla pod, and ambergris. It vaguely smells like the brown vanilla sugar perfume I once obsessed over when I was young. It’s both too sweet and too strong and faintly boozy and it makes me stand straighter with every spritz. I dress and spray my face with rose water, coating it in golden oil afterward. I decide I should start cooking.
My love comes home from work and we greet each other with excitement, as we always do. Once she’s settled in, she joins me in the cleaning and peeling and chopping necessary for our meal. We get distracted and talk in tangents, we take turns leading the charge, and I offer to let her cook the chicken since she’s so good at it. The sauce coating our herbed chicken is heavily lemon-ed and garlic-ed, and it’s so delicious both of us literally lick our plates after we finish our meal, giggling at how silly it is all the while.
After quickly cleaning up and washing the dishes, we change our clothes so they’re right for walking. I braid my damp hair. We take out the garbage and recycling and then head out on a walk - the walk we promised to each other the day before.The sky is fading from blue to gold and the clouds are textured in ways that feel new to me. We walk toward the park on the river with a mission in mind, a location to make it to before we turn around. Admiring garden gnomes and blooming gardens, we aren’t in any rush when we hear the jingling of bells and the joyous wail of a violin.
On an unassuming side street in Northeast Minneapolis there is a group of men in white outfits with flowered hats, bells on their shins and handkerchiefs in their hands, dancing in sync in a circular formation in the middle of the road. We can smell the primal sweat from their dance mixing with the dirt of the earth that had received fresh rain. There are onlookers on the sidewalks, some are wearing the same outfit, others appear like me and Lizzy, pulled in by the magnetic jubilation. I smile and watch as they finish their dance, and everyone claps loudly for their performance.
During the dance there was an elderly man whose eye we caught. He approaches us with a smile. We congratulate his performance and ask about the dance. Morris dancing, he explains to us, comes from England. He tells us how one year he was sitting in his home and heard the music outside of his door. He was surprised to see the dancing in the street and immediately wanted to join, so he did. I ask him if that dance was in celebration of anything in particular. He says, “it is and it isn’t,” and mostly leaves it at that. I tell him we’re chasing the sun and want to continue our walk before it sets, and we thank him for sharing with us. Before we go, he makes a point to say how special this neighborhood - our neighborhood - is. How he’s never lived anywhere better, and invites us to join his block specifically for National Night Out in the beginning of August. We happily accept and move forward with our journey.
We trek past the community garden, and when Lizzy asks to cross the street so she can smell the soft pink lilies growing in someone’s yard, I say yes. She tells me they don’t smell like much while I re-tie my shoe laces, but we appreciate their beauty nonetheless before continuing on. When we finally make it to the park, everything is bathed in golden light. I implore her to sit in the grass with me and we sit facing the sun in peaceful quiet. Each blade of grace, each leaf or needle of every tree is illuminated by this otherworldly sunset. I sit for a few moments with my eyes closed, and a few more moments with them open.
We stand and head toward our final destination. We’re stopped by a stranger with a high quality camera who shows us a picture he took of us while we were sitting in the grass. Our silhouettes are black against the golden sun, you can tell we are gazing at each other, and I can feel our love through just a glance at his photo. We share our appreciation and he walks away without another word.
Our walk brings us to an old bridge. Lizzy says the smell of it transports her to the 1800s, and I agree. It smells old - somehow both timeless and simultaneously defined by time. We admire how the clouds are turning from gold to pink, and how the pink is reflected in the river flowing not far below the bridge, thanks to our excess of rain this summer. We watch mysterious patterns rise and flow with the current. I think about how this day has made me feel like a stone in a stream, each moment washing over and caressing me, only to be replaced by the next moment and the next.
The destination is punctuated with an old railroad bridge. I recall once smoking too much weed and walking the bridge at night with my friends and how I was so frightened but didn’t say anything because I didn’t want to be called a chicken for the millionth time in my life. We don’t attempt to cross the bridge, we have no interest. We take time to appreciate the view, and notice our good friends’ apartment building basking in the glow of the sunset. There’s a small memorial with fresh flowers for someone who had died at the spot in 2021. I think about the sweet earnestness of walking to this island and placing flowers and mementos for someone you love who has passed. The mosquitos start to swarm. It’s time to head back.
Our walk home is filled with rambling conversations as well as quiet contemplation. The journey back is on an incline, and soon the humidity and exertion coat me with sticky sweat. I complain that it feels like there's a pool forming in my buttcrack and we laugh.
So we return home, tired and grateful with a blister forming on my right heel. We take off our clothes to cool off. I watch Lizzy play with Rommy, and laugh and laugh at how funny he looks when he jumps up to catch his pink feather toy. We watch the remainder of my episode of Vanderpump Rules. We cry when Beau proposes to Stassi because we love love. I feed Rom his final meal of the day and prep his food for the morning. Lizzy and I brush our teeth side by side, smiling through the foamy toothpaste. Our room is cool and crisp and our bed is a cloud as I slip in and journal about my day. Lizzy joins me and we giggle and ponder and as always, I’m the first to drift toward sleep. My childhood stuffed unicorn Starlight sits at my neck, my chin perched atop her back with my eyes closed when Lizzy says, “are you sleeping?” I say no with the guilt of a caught child and we giggle again. On the brink of sleep, Rom snuggled between my legs, Lizzy and I profess our love as we always do, like this could be our last time telling each other, as if our slumber is a year long journey apart and we have to convey enough love for it to permeate through our dreams. And it does. It always does.
