Part 13

Wednesday Man

He swept his driveway maybe a little too often these days.   Maybe 3 times a week.  Certainly more than it needed, but it got him out of the house and breathing some fresh air, as well as whatever marginal exercise that came with it.     

The driveway ran along the side of his house and into the back, so he found that it was a way to get out, without attracting too much attention from the sightseers.   His house had become famous in a somewhat earlier part of his life, and even though it had been 30, 40 years - somewhere back there - he would still find people walking slowly by the house from across the street and gawking and taking pictures.   

Funny people.    After all these years, and he was never quite adapted to it.   Maybe that's what she always saw in him anyway.   The strangeness.   Like living on Wednesday when everyone else was on Tuesday.

He swept and thought a little more on it.   She was gone now, but they had two grown kids, Ellie in Chicago, Joshua in San Francisco, both doing ok.   They called every now and then to get a pulse on him.    For the first few years he called them more than he should have.  He knew that, but the empty house, the silence of his life would overwhelm him, and he was not quite used to no longer being a Dad.  Being Daddy.

Unsteady, with her not around anymore.  

And she was gone.   Took some getting used to, and even now he was not quite over it.   How do you get over it?  he asked to the broom in his hands.   He didn't know, and the broom never answered, or maybe answered in the silent way that God always answered, by throwing the question back at him, so that he could then put it in perspective and maybe then realize that that was not the question he wanted answered after all.

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There was a young man once.   A lifetime ago now.   He had told his story to this young man.   A wild story. Told it as if he had made it all up and it was a fantastic fiction.   Then the young man had gone and become famous and had made a television show about it.   A bunch of nonsense really.    But the television people had used this house as the fictional front to the story, and ever since then you get people across the street taking pictures.   When the kids were growing up they always got a kick out of living in a famous house.  Now, with the kids gone, it's just quiet.

People. When he first came, he had never planned on staying long, but then he met her and he learned this amazing thing, that you could still feel a connection even though you were not connected.   It made existence a lot harder and lonelier, but the connection became all that mattered. It was all worth it.  He had learned that from her.   

They laughed so much when they were together.  He with his dry wit.  Her with her sly broadsides.  You could never tell when they were coming, out of her,  but they were always worth the wait.    The two of them fit together, so after a spell they agreed to give it a try and they adopted kids, and Jesus, the intensity of it all, raising them.   

Then when it came time to go back, and they came for him, he said No.    I have kids now.

He swept.   3 people on bicycles now across the street, stopped.  Looking.   Yes this is the house.   He didn't wave to people anymore.   The kids used to.

This body has gotten old, he thought, but he was not ready to free himself of it.  More and more lately he was thinking that he would not.   He was not quite ready to face what either of those decisions would mean.   Would not face it.   There's an odd human trait that he had picked up, he thought.   Just blindly moving forward. Funny how you adapt.

The broom swayed symphonically back and forth over the concrete of the driveway, and the regular rhythms of it gave him some peace.   He thought about sped arrows, and how - once released - would fly immediately and irretrievably beyond the archer's grasp.  This, he thought, was certainly the greatest of all mysteries.  Once released, it was as if they were never in his hands at all. 

Nanu Nanu.