ordinary morning

Last night Ming was half-asleep and I was crying on him about death, feeling scared, touching his shoulder.

Then this morning we were late to the Catholic Worker to serve.  I was crying again, couldn't stop.  It would have been Dad's 62nd birthday today.

Do I remember how he really looked?  Yes.  How it felt to hold his hand?  Yes.  The sound of his voice?  Yes.  His hug?  I think so.

When I was a little girl and he would drop me off at school, he'd kiss the top of my head and say, "Have fun, be good, learn a lot."  I always liked that.

We have too many cookies.  I will bring them to the meeting tonight.  My neck is sore and my right shoulder again.

A long-time volunteer this morning at the soup line was walking weird and bumped into a table, asking me where his mom was.  His eyes were wide open, but I realized he couldn't see.  "She's over there!" I said, and next I looked he was down on the ground.

I yelled for Ming, who helped.  Ming thinks it was a seizure.  The paramedics came and a fire truck.  I was waiting in the van.

This morning I woke up from a dream.  I was visiting a fancy house full of antiques.  Moving from room to room, looking at things.

A scientist said the wood making a certain railing was rabbit wood or squirrel wood, not deer wood, and animals had wood in their bodies instead of bones.  It was beautiful brown, and I wanted to touch it.

A black sweater was on a couch, and it looked like mine, but I checked and it was the wrong size.  Then I woke up and saw Ming had hung that sweater on the back of our bedroom door, and I laughed.  It had been in storage.

There's a special awards banquet breakfast this morning, and NDE is getting a trophy for the float we had in the MLK parade.  The breakfast costs five dollars.  NDE is paying for all the NDEers who go.

Cookies cookies cookies cookies.

I'm charmed by my friend's four year old, when he waved from by the wall and showed me his dinosaur toy that I had pretended was my baby when he and his mom were over at my house.

We were eating strange soup that was beans and falling-apart pasta in a thick, slippery broth.

I would pet the dino, and the kid would pause then make the dino roar at me.  I would pretend to be afraid.  We did this like 25 times.  The kid laughed and laughed.

Then I cuddled the dino and said, "My baby!" and after a while the kid pushed his way into my arms and wanted to be cuddled too.

When the kid was under the table picking up dropped things, I was afraid he'd stand up and hit his head on the table, so I put my hand on his head, and I remember the way his hair felt, soft.

Life is too much.

But the show must go on.  Ming will come home soon from the breakfast with a trophy and show it to me.  I will react appropriately, and we'll do the big shop and have our day.  Ordinary unordinary morning.