It’s a beautiful day

“It’s a beautiful sunny day today!” said the old lady next to me on the bus, the paper-thin skin around her eyes folding into a million crinkles as she smiled.  Translucent she was, almost, in the sunlight.

 

“Yes, yes it is … it’s very beautiful,” I said, mustering great effort to be pleasant, even though I really didn’t have time for this.

 

I debated what else to say, something to demonstrate to her that today’s young people aren’t unfeeling self-serving workaholics who would choose spreadsheet manipulation over pleasant conversation.

 

My fingers itched to get back to my laptop.  I thought about asking her where she was from.  I hoped she wouldn’t ask me what I was doing on a bus to Syracuse.

 

I settled on something else about the weather.  When I heard no response, I looked over and saw she had fallen asleep.

 

I idly clicked Apple + S on my computer.  I shut my eyes for a little.  Later we’d have the same conversation.

Fire-Engine Red

She had a good life, as it was.  She liked being a receptionist at the nail salon, and she liked eating eggs in bed with her husband on weekends.  Had the fumes from the nail polish solvents not caused her vicious demise through various iterations of cancer, one might have even said she was happy.

 

She left behind no offspring, but her terrier, Bruce Springsteen II, would find a nice home with her sister’s in-laws.  

 

Today, Bruce II enjoys cookies shaped like dog bones and long walks on the beach.  He’s seventeen years old now, which means that most of the time he is asleep.

 

If she had had children, one of them would be the star of a popular cooking show, and the other would have a daughter who would aspire to be the first woman president.

 

Her husband has since remarried.

{do, wait, sleep}

The road of highway stretched forever, or at least as far as he could see.  He’d get through it, though, at some point.  Eventually he’d be inside, on the couch, maybe with a beer.  Guinness.  Until then, here he was, alive, breathing, stuck in traffic.

 

Tomorrow he’d do the same, and the same the day after, and so on.  He might change jobs, get a divorce, move to Thailand and start a coconut ranch, but it would all be variations on the theme: do things, wait for other things, do more, wait more, sleep.  One day these days would run out.  Maybe they’d run out suddenly – a heart attack while snorkeling in the Caribbean with his son-in-law.  Or they’d go slowly – he’d watch himself gradually get weaker, less able to get up stairs, remember where he put things, care for himself, until finally one day, in a white room with maroon curtains and echoes of heels clicking down hallways, all would fade to black.  Or maybe it’d go at a speed somewhere in between – everyone dies of cancer these days anyway.

 

He took a sip of his old coffee and thought about dinner.  In fifteen minutes, traffic would pick up a little and he’d get home faster than he expected.  True to prediction, he’d have a Guinness while watching reruns of television shows he used to watch as a kid.  His wife would put their children to bed, and he’d spend a moment or so idly turning over in his mind the idea that very little time seems to have passed since he was the kid going to bed and being tucked in.  He could hear the I Love Lucy song as it happened then, as now.

 

Later, Guinness long gone, he’d have dreams about fireflies that could swim and where he was looking for something in a big house.

 

Tomorrow, more time would pass at varying speeds.