Of Sidewalks and the Aurora

Grey early evening but it is not raining, at least not yet. The sidewalks are a mess. City crews have been out. Concrete dust, empty holes and yellow, blue and red painted arrows are everywhere. My pathways through the neighborhood are just plain ripped up and gone, vanished in the span of a day. My mind wonders if everyone who is tied to the two breadwinner lifestyle find things as simple as street maintenance as confounding as I do? I mean there was a notice I suppose, it said I had to pay the city $220 as my aliquot share for "sidewalk repair." Maybe.

Each morning I get up and take my shower in the dark. While my wife and kids are just beginning to stir I am packing lunch bags and conjuring up breakfast. Yeah conjuring describes it. One child won't eat toasted bread, one will. One won't eat friend eggs and the other won't eat scrambled. About the only agreement at this meal between the two of them is on the subject of bacon. Yeah it is like that song says, if it may result in bacon I would kill that porker with my own bare hands. And then there comes the dash to the car and the kids are off to school, and me to the bus stop and work.

Perhaps the notice provided the date the work was going to commence or maybe not. I mean I looked at that official looking paper when I got home. Yeah I was focused. It came on a night when I got here first and it was time for a Dad special meal. This means tomato sauce and burger was to be involved. Tomato sauce can cure all ills. Boboli bread and tomato sauce and burger equal a meat lover's pizza. Pasta and tomato sauce and hamburger avec fromage equals backed ziti. Two hands, buns and a frying pan mean a Cheeseburger in Paradise. Me, meat and tomato sauce mean a city notice just doesn’t get the respect that official looking city seal should command.

Somewhere I read a book about reclaiming the margins of life. The author implied that we had to set times for things like dinner and tasks and leisure. He implied that turning off phones and TVs and radios at meals and during the early evening hours were the way to go. Each night when I get home I have to check the homework online for each child. Each night when I get home I have to open up the computer for their research. (I did mention the dinner thing above right usually occurring concurrently with this process). The topics are always so damned easy too. Tonight one off project was to list fifty relatives you have (dead or alive) and define their relationship to you. Here come those damn consanguinity charts.

Maybe that doggerel ascribed to Ben Franklin was right. I remember it because it was burned on a piece of wood that hung on my bedroom door when I was a kid. I think it was a souvenir from some place out west. It went like this:

As a rule,
A man's a fool,
When its hot he wants it cool,
When its cool he wants it hot,
What it is he wants it not.

I think life in general is like that, if it weren't frenetic I would be bored. If it is frantic I am stressed. There is no happy medium well except for Madame Marie who keeps that bottle of gin beneath the folding card table which on which she tells fortunes.

I am not upset at the city by any means for the sidewalks need to be repaired. Really. It was only last week I almost did a header out there on one of those 1 inch heaved expansion slots. What upsets me is that I seem to be missing bigger and bigger things. Maybe one day due to my harried pace I will look around and my neighborhood will be completely and utterly gone. Maybe they will have moved it en masse to another part of the city or state. I mean I am just saying given how distracted I am it could happen and I would be none the wiser until I got home and only an empty pit remained.

There are times when I think it is only me that feels this way, and then I watch someone from work on the phone talking in that terse "What do you mean” voice to someone a child, a creditor whoever but it is the same tone I get when something has just whizzed by me. Maybe it is the technology. Maybe. Or maybe it is the willingness to just give up and give in to an unsustainable pace of living thrown at us by others in our communal quest for more, more, more (Thank you Billy Idol). Either way I don't really see it slowing down anytime soon.

I took a break to think when was the last time life was slow? I think it was on a camping trip to Rabbit Blanket Lake. As we sat out there in the northern Ontario night the campground was nearly empty, but we had a waterfront lot. The air was cool and the cell phones were out of range so the place was silent except for a few muffled conversations. The campfire crackled and a nice cold beer was nestled in my hand. Sitting there on a camp chair I looked up at the stars. Yeah, the moment didn't last long, but it was a slow moment, a special moment. Maybe this summer I can create another special moment like that. I hope so.

Before I die I want another shot as seeing the aurora put on a good show. I have only seen it once but it was ethereal and satisfying.