When the party’s over, it’s time to do the dishes. Two
weeks of intense focus preparing for my wife’s retirement gathering, our
school’s 50th Anniversary and attending to my visiting
brother-in-law and his family, my daughter and my two grandchildren— and
suddenly it’s over. The house is strangely quiet, the floor not littered with
toys, the table not covered with the leftovers of the 10-month-old’s eating
habits. After being thrown back into the storm of life, with laughing and
screaming children, bubbling and babbling conversation, big meals and lots of
pots and pans to clean, it’s back to the empty nest. It’s a welcome quiet, but
I still love the color and the noise.
Woke up this morning and made a list of “must do’s,” got the 50 e-mails down to 10, sent off the Pentatonic Press invoices, cleaned
my desk and balanced my checkbook. Found six letters from Kaiser telling me I
owed them $10, two people who signed up for my jazz course and other assorted
flotsam and jetsam of the tides of daily life. A certain satisfaction attending
to the little details of life, business and money, but I sure wouldn’t want to
spend all of my days like that. And of course, I did sneak away to the piano
and reunited with Bach and Bird, both of whom probably didn’t miss me, but somewhere
might be happy that I’m struggling up the stairs again to try to meet their
genius.
Now it’s 1:30 and the body is shouting, “Move!”
Regular exercise has disappeared and next to compulsive eating, not the best
combination. So ready to head out the door and let the list alone for a
bit—well, after the bank and post office. But as much as I’ll enjoy walking on
this lovely day, the dark cloud of Ghana will follow me. Meaning I really need
to get my plane ticket for the summer course we're offering in Ghana, need to work on the complicated online Visa application and all the
annoying things it asks for like passport size photos and money orders and
return envelopes and such. But I simply can't deal with it now.
Well, as the saying goes: "Here today, Ghana tomorrow."
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