Saturday Evening, Uncomposed

The loss of our ordinary.

Baby Girl and I drove home at sunset tonight.

A brilliant ball of yellow-hot fire melting into a stoic treeline.  Radiating red giving way to lavender and a nearly cloudless subtle blue sky–the last vestiges of a waning day.  A day representing change.  Complete sentences are hard to muster.

It’s Saturday night.  The night we’ve come to take for granted as a night for family suppers.  Most recently wedged in between loads of laundry, mop sponges and Barney movies.  As has become our habit.  

But this night is different.  Last Saturday my father rocked Baby Girl to sleep in his special way, and then drove home.  The next morning, he had a stroke.  This night, we are not enjoying a family supper.  This night, he’s in a hospital room.  My mother is by his side.  They are not with us.  As had become our habit.  Though, he thinks and speaks more like himself each day, he cannot move in the way he did six days ago.  We hope and plan that he’ll regain most of his skills, but I’m still numbed by the sudden change in reality.  The servant, for the moment, becoming the served.  The strength I’ve assumed my whole life in a weakened state.    The final release of any tightly-held fragments of childhood.  I’ve already begun the thought- and writing-process of recording my testimony of God’s steadfastness, but this comes first.  The mourning of the loss of our ordinary.

I covet the mundane reality of Dreft and Gain alongside conversation and ballgames. In the span of six days, I’ve come to covet the ordinary of a walk down the hall, a drive down the street, sitting at the table for a meal, an unencumbered smile, the familiarity of blue jeans, the sop of bread against your green bean juice, the hand-off of a sleeping baby, the balancing act of carrying five full take-out cups and a drink box, the simplicity of a kiss on the cheek.

The blazing sunset–an ordinary occurence–this night, signals a new ordinary for me and mine.  Maybe temporary, maybe not, but we hope.  In this moment, near is made far by the lack of a physical presence we’ve come to assume.  But, oddly, far of spirit is made near by readjusted priorities and the loss of the ordinary time together we almost forgot to cherish.

It’s Saturday night.  The night that marks the shifting of our ordinary.  The sun setting on the complacency of extraordinary habits that had come to be ordinary.  In the span of 20 miles, the solar spectacular giving way to halogen beams marking the yellow lines to home.  A reminder of the invariable constants.  The comfort of the familiar.  The hope and promise of rising in the morning.  To embrace a renewed ordinary.

It’s not that unusual 
When everything is beautiful 
It’s just another 
Ordinary miracle today 

The sky knows when it’s time to snow 
Don’t need to teach a seed to grow 
It’s just another 
Ordinary miracle today …

Sun comes out and shines so bright 
And disappears again at night 
It’s just another 
Ordinary miracle today 

It’s just another 
Ordinary miracle today

~ from Ordinary Miracle by Sarah McLachlan