Sunny Side Up! May 30, 2001 �2001 by Kathleen Gibson Tomorrow: A Chance to Begin Again I wanted to stay in bed yesterday. The blankets were warm, the house unreasonably chilly, and my head felt like a well-soaked sponge. The family cold had caught me too. But I had an eight o�clock appointment, writing deadlines to meet, correspondence to keep up. And I did, though all day both brain and brawn walked the picket line, arm in arm. I wrote a total of one hundred and sixty-one words, made everyone else miserable with my complaining. Pitiful. In the early evening I was still pounding senselessly at the keyboard when my daughter came into my office and stood behind me reading what I�d written. �Go to bed, Mom,� she said charitably. �You�re not making sense.� I didn�t argue. Today is new and improved. It�s nine-fifteen. The weather is warmer, the head cold manageable. Saxophonist Kenny G is serenading me on the stereo; the sun reaches through the newborn leaves on the Manitoba Maple outside my window and dapples my workspace with moving fingers of light. This morning I�ve already listened to the news, exercised, seen my family off to their jobs, had breakfast and a time of meditation, deleted all but eighty-five of the words I wrote yesterday, and written several hundred more. I�m going to like this day much better, I think. Even though yesterday began and ended awfully, today I can begin again. I recently spoke to a lady who knows about bad days. A few years ago fire gutted her mobile home. She and her husband moved another one onto the same lot and started over. Last month they were informed that the owner of the trailer park could no longer maintain the property. They were given only a few weeks to move. Not move, as in �pack up your things and get out�� but MOVE, as in �take up your house and walk.� All the residents of the court, where many have lived for decades, were given the same instructions. Friends and neighbors are now compelled to find new maps to push the pins of their lives into. New neighborhoods. New routines. A tornado has swept in, scattering far and wide the community they�ve come to love and trust, the place they call home. But this woman told me, smiling, that it�s for the best. A new start, she said. I�ve thought about that all week. Like the music playing on my stereo, life has its own rhythm. Sometimes a single note will soar, long and sweet, spin off into silence, and be replaced by a flurry of sound�drums, hurried notes tumbling down the scale at alarming speed. It�s during those breathless silences of life, the moments after the news comes, after the horrible day, that we wonder�what next? What about tomorrow? There are no certain answers, but there�s certainly one good attitude: It may take a while to pick up yesterday�s pieces, but tomorrow, I can begin again. Sounds like faith speaking, to me. You can respond to this column via email at [email protected] |