Little Things

Many a visitor to my office will report of the difficulty of droning on with life's rhythm:

Each day, I wake up and do the same thing ... and then I die!

I'm just a mealticket or a housecleaner or both!

True enough, I suppose, the monotony of life -- punctuated by everyday detours into love and loss -- can get to us. I don't know the percentages, but many of us on God's Good Earth go through the same routine day in and day out.

A Bugle call or alarm clock;

The two fried eggs with potatoes and a slab of fried animal for the omnivours;

Lots of Coffee or Tea;

A trip to the place of our work; 

The job with a sandwich or Tiffin somewhere half way through the slog; 

The return home -- damn that guy/gal who cut me off;

Read the mail and what IT wants from you, this time; 

Some positive, negative, titillating or deadening experience;

Sleep; and, yes ...

A Bugle call or alarm clock to wake me, again.

The degree to which the monotony is -- at any moment -- augmented or replaced by "comradeship and true joy" (Alexander Woolcott?) must be very variable for some 40 - 60 years of our work-lives. How shall one approach most anything that confronts us in our day-by-day activities and still recall that the core of our lives is to be found in the relationships we have with our near-and-dear and with our less-near-and-less-dear ... oh! ... and with ourselves.

Last weekend, I arose, did my usuals and came downstairs with GuntherDog. I let the (other) Old Guy out and heard a curious sound. Oh, my gosh ... water running. Went out to find Gunther lolling about in his shagginess in 15 (F) degree weather and to a different noise ... but still water running. Over the fence? A spigot had blown. Apparently, I had neglected to sufficiently shut down the valve in the basement a few months ago when the cold began to descend on me on all others living in NE USA (maybe 75 Million of my not-so-dear-or-near) and there would be a price to pay.

Went down the basement with the right wrench and carefully -- oh, so carefully, so as not to break the shutoff valve -- shut down the flow of water to the outside.

Part of the price of owning a home. Yeah, there'll be a cost to pay. $10 for a new valve and maybe another $30 for a new copper pipe, as the old one cracked inside the outside wall of the house. I left a note for M and got my office ready for its first morning visitor. Later, I bought a carload full of sand to spread on my driveway and my neighbor's ... she must be 85 and no Sonja Henie.

I'm no Pollyanna and don't see the driveway as a blessing from above. Indeed, when Spring comes with its thaw and I do the work, it will exact its price from me ... at least a couple of hours. I suppose I could hire a plumber. I thought of that and then, last night, had a dream:

I told someone that I needed to go and offer prayers now that my Father had died and the dream -- more or less -- started with me offering up these prayers standing amidst a row of pews in some religious place. As I was reciting whatever it was that I was reciting, people were criticizing me ... loud enough for me to hear and be troubled by the words ... "Why would someone come after me just after my Father had died? Why?" I turned around and showed one or more of them a picture of my Dad ... or was it a picture of me. As I've aged, I tell myself and others that I shave my long-gone Father each morning in the mirror. I don't know what I was trying to communicate but I do know that most everything I know about Plumbing and Carpentry and Not Getting Electrocuted when messing with the house's power grid, I learned from Old Miltie ... well, actually, from Young Miltie. Even after he got old, if I had to do something complicated, I'd call him up: 

"Hey, Dad ... I'm changing this three pole light switch?"

"Hey ... Just calling to get some advice on these old faucets 

that won't come loose so I can pop in a new set."

"Dad ... Shit! An old cast-iron soil pipe cracked and I wanted some sympathy."

I was reading the early chapters of Ecclesiastes last night with a friend ... another denizen of the Fourth Quarter. Until the author discovered relationship, everything appeared to him "as futile, empty and foul wind." Life is more than foul wind. I don't recall if it was Alexander Woollcott or GK Chesterton who wrote:

'We have a long way to travel before we get back to what Dickens meant; 

and the passage is along a rambling English road, 

a twisting road such as Mr. Pickwick traveled. 

But this is at least part of what he meant; 

that comradeship and true joy are not interludes in our travels 

but rather our travels are interludes in comradeship and joy, 

which through God shall endure forever. 

The inn does not point to the road; the road points to the inn. 

And all roads point to an ultimate inn 

where we shall meet Dickens and all his characters, 

and when we drink, again, 

it shall be from the great flagons in the tavern at the end of the World.'