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The forgetting is the easy part

Jeanne Sager - Columnist
Posted 9/21/20

I like the mornings the best. Sometimes I wake up, and I've forgotten. I let the dogs out. I let the dogs in and feed them, let them out yet again.

If it's a weekend, I can keep up this quiet …

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The forgetting is the easy part

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I like the mornings the best. Sometimes I wake up, and I've forgotten. I let the dogs out. I let the dogs in and feed them, let them out yet again.

If it's a weekend, I can keep up this quiet rhythm of normal for nearly an hour, sometimes even two, puttering around the house, dumping the compost in the outside bin, shuffling old newspapers into the recycling bin.

But at some point, it becomes impossible to delay the inevitable, and the reminder that the world is not as it once was sneaks back in.

Oh.

Right.

Yes.

The world is on fire, in some places literally.

And our homes have become more than they ever were before -- workplaces for some, schools for others. For most, homes have become a sort of safety bubble, a place where you can lay down your masks and check the sanitizer at the door, where it's safe to hug and to laugh out loud with the select few who have become our lifelines.

They allow us to wake up, to start out our days in periods of blissful ignorance as we go about the business of waking up... until we're once again awake and remembering.

Here in our small towns in our corner of the country our homes have been kept largely safe from the sounds of change familiar to those in big cities -- the clanging of ambulance sirens, the clanging of church bells for small, socially distance funerals, the riots and the teargassing, the roars of fire eating away at the countryside.

But mine can't be the only home marked instead by periods of eerie quiet where noise should be. This should be the season of soccer, my Sunday afternoons marked by a chorus of car doors slamming and parents cheering for small children as they race around in the sunshine.

Silent Sundays are a reminder as much as turning on the news or grabbing a mask before walking outside.

All has changed.

And yet some things remain the same.

I still get up. I still let the dogs out, let the dogs in and feed them.

They still demand yet another romp outdoors before I can go about my day.

They still give me time to just be me... at least for a little while.

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