The Finest Fine Morning

The kitchen’s lamplight was slanting down through the blinds from the breakfast nook window when I stepped out to check the cat food situation. Our old barn cat hadn’t eaten quite all his food from the night before. When I started to dump a cup of the pebble-like chow into the bowl, I stopped and look a second look. Two daddy longlegs (harvestmen) were crouched in the sloping slick surface, their bodies almost the size and color of the cat food, touching the remnants, feeding on the battered tabby’s table crumbs. I left them undisturbed and instead placed a small mound of food on the window ledge next to them. Even if His Royal Badness doesn’t get it, the blue jays will, at first light.

Morning’s air was cool and pleasant on my ears, making me feel as if I’d had a fresh haircut, and the smile of a moon was back, muted through a patch of cloud or high fog or ectoplasm, and the light helped me see the maple leaves scattered across the back yard like summer’s memoirs manuscript. The screech owl whinneyed across the valley and the sound made me glad and lonesome in the same snapping second, and I remembered that I have been procrastinating putting away my summer clothes and moving the winter ones to the fore of my closet.

Does coffee ever taste as good as it does on an October Friday morning when the arthritis is damped down to a dull hum and a woman way out of my league nuzzles her cold pug nose into the side of my neck while I pour it?

Do the dead relatives and saints to whom I constantly mutter during my waking hours exchange looks and dig elbows into each other’s glorified ribs when I say good morning to the spider up in the corner of the utility room? I suspect they do. I suspect they have a high old time following me around, if they’re inclined to do so on certain days, and on a morning like this, why wouldn’t they be?

Before the light ever comes up across the Clinch Mountains, before I say my quiet goodbyes to my white-faced dog, I can almost almost almost believe that it’s all going to be okay, and that the One Who put me here is pleased even by my gaffs and screw-ups and embarrassing, careening, scattershot manner of life.

Ah, and a note of triumph — I remember to finish my coffee before I brush my teeth.

Today I am in ordinary time, with new light-gauge strings, and plenty of Thursday’s sleep packed inside me.

~ S.K. Orr