I lay in bed with the windows open and the sound of the lawn sprinkler rotating. Just five more days of work. When it’s over they don’t bring you a cake or slap you on the back and say good job. And I like that, it just ends.

There was a spot in the forest, something about it felt special. Imagining what it was like a long time ago, needing to live near a water source, out of the wind. Times you could imagine something sacred about the land, like it held past things no one could see. But you could feel it, it felt charmed. The way the light came through at certain times in the day and the birds gathered. Small sounds, that perfect nature thing. The smell of hay scattered along the path sweetened by the morning dew.

Life started to settle in on itself. Going to bed early, taking short walks with the dog. Doing my morning push-ups and taking cold showers, watering the garden beds. The spray pattern of the sprinkler turning. Dawn hanging the laundry out back to dry.

I dreamt I relapsed on white wine. Some woman I used to work with posted a picture of herself by a sunset in some glowy state with a cold glass of wine. It must have burrowed into my brain because there I was drinking again. The relapse dreams were pretty common my first year sober. Now only once or twice a year, embers.

The sputtering of the lawn sprinkler moved in a predictable pattern. A staccato spitting sound. First it was soothing, then not. I imagined the sprinkler became something more, inevitable, the way it turned. An invisible elliptical thing casting its reach everywhere, coming for you next. I started worrying about Dawn’s health. Picturing ourselves older. Wondering what had happened to our livelihoods, why I couldn’t sleep. Small itches or muscle spasms in my foot. Haunted by the banal, the meaninglessness, the repetition. Bored by life, watching it turn.

But there was so much more. The sound of Charlotte’s footsteps downstairs getting ready for school: thump, thump, thump. Eating the last of the pie right out of the tin. Crows and songbirds, a depth of green in the trees.

Life settles, it’s okay. We make settlements and set up camp, then move on when it’s time. No one brings cake. Make hay while the sun shines.

Categories: Creative Nonfiction, death, Memoir

Tags: Creative Nonfiction, mindfulness, pacific northwest