That Monday Feeling

Today after church Bob had two meetings, one with a family planning a baptism and one with a family planning a funeral. I admit that sometimes I envy the way his vocation allows these kinds of intimacies with strangers, joining with people for the most important events of their lives. It seems to keep them bonded forever in some way as in years later identifying each other according to the event, "he baptized our baby" or "I buried their mother."

My biggest decision today is whether to bake biscuits or blog. Our old house is drafty and the fireplace ignition has worn down, so there's not much to keep us warm except layers of sweaters, the electric pad on our bed, and the kitchen candles lit for at least the illusion of warmth. (An old trick from one of my college roommates when we lived in a small tailor house insulated like a tin can on a South Dakota prairie. "There are universities in South Dakota?" I was asked once when I lived in New York City, but that's another story.)

Baking is another way to keep warm. My apron fits over my sweatered layers and I occasionally stick my hands in the oven for a burst of heat. A fresh pot of coffee helps too. Afternoon coffee is my Sunday indulgence, to give you an idea of how easily pleased I am these days. Or maybe I'm difficult to please, depending on how you look at it. Bob would probably say I'm hard to please because I always like the bedroom window open six inches while we sleep, he prefers it open four inches. I slide it to six inches before I slip into the heated bed. He comes in later, shuts it to four inches. I get up in the middle of the night, slide it back to six inches. And so on. Our window dilemma may be one way to understand the bottom side of marriage, or the underside of human relationships in general -- we're much more alike than different yet we dither back and forth about two inches instead of keeping eyes on the prize: fresh air.

Or possibly the window is an indicator of my poverty of spirit -- I'm not thinking about the things of birth and death, I'm trying to warm my house while also feeling the precise amount of frigid air that my lungs and pores crave. I'm thinking about Monday morning and back to work that, I suppose, is also about the big things in life, somewhere down the line. Last week at church my friend Ed and I talked about "that Sunday feeling" of dread about Monday morning. It's the opposite of "that Thursday feeling" of hope for the weekend. Monday morning is icy fingers plucking you from the warmth of imagination and and into the cold of routine. Maybe the trick is to hard wire your brain to link Monday with the things of meaning. It is, of course, but the hard part is to feel it.

For now, I'm focused on baking biscuits, ala my Betty Crocker cookbook. That's it.

Thank you, friends, for coming over to my blog. Stay safe and warm.

With love from yours truly,

Natural Born Bleeding Heart