Memorial Day

On this day of the year, at this time of day, every day for the last some thirty years except the last one, we would all have risen, and have been wandering around the way of the recently risen, alighting at last at the round table of last night's merriment.  The white coffee pot with the thingamajig on top which I never mastered completely would be making its first round around the round table.

It would be too early for the newspaper but somebody, usually me would have already made the walk to the end of the driveway to look up and down Salem Avenue just in case some miracle had occurred, which it never did.  The conversation was always a little halted at first, how did you sleep, fine, how did you sleep, but eventually like a needle on a phonograph it found its groove.  Muffins and blueberries would be issued by Nena and be eaten, then quiche and sometimes black-eyed peas.  The newspaper would have arrived by then and be passed in pieces among the congregation, the Cubs/Cards box score from the day before, comics, the local news and the news of the nation, and what the hell, some arts and entertainment.

And maybe sometime after the quiche I would take a pee and coming back notice my stuff scattered around the sofa bed, and just you know, put it all together, do my best to make the bed back into a sofa, come back and join the conversation, but soon afterwards there would be a drift towards the car.

 Dropping my bag into the trunk, that soft thud, it was just sad.  Memorial Day was the beginning of summer, and the whole summer lay ahead.  Well not quite the whole summer.  It's like when the waitress, after a wait that always seems too long, sets down the pizza and you eagerly wolf down a slice or two and then you look down and there are still plenty of slices, but not as many as there had been before, and now you no longer have a whole pizza to eat.  Just sad.

And then some food is pressed upon the guests and maybe a plant or two, and then the hugs, funny how they start randomly but as soon as it is clear what is going on everybody lines up so that everybody hugs everybody else and nobody is left unhugged by any other people.  And then we are backing down the driveway, the driver is asking is it clear and the navigator is saying right after this red car, and then we are out in the street.  The waving is a bit too much and, knowing that, people wave even more, making joke of it.  And the last thing, just as we drive out of view, is Fred and Nena, just beginning to turn to walk back up the driveway.


Summertime has been a long time coming to the lake  shore.  For weeks the wind has been coming from the east and it has been colder by the lake.  Not all that cold, but after maybe ten minutes you are heading back in from the balcony.  Fucking wind.

But yesterday it went up to the mid 80s, and they are expected to last at least the week.  Yesterday afternoon I was puttering around with my pots, chatting with my neighbors, filling the seed sock.  It was so pleasant our there and then a quiver of excitement ran through me when I remembered that part of my summer morning routine is reading the newspaper and sipping coffee as the sun rises, and in the coming morning I could do just that.

And so I did, warm cat fur on my left hand, the finches flying in and stopping short seeing the balcony was occupied by one of those big apes with the gargantuan brains and his companion, a savage beast, and retreating to the railing on the next balcony over, eyeing that full sack of seed and tapping their birdie feet impatient for the intruders to leave so that they can gorge themselves on seed.

Much like Fred standing on the curb of Salem Avenue, tapping his toe, waiting for the paper, so he can gorge himself on the box score of the Cub victory of the day before.