Ten.Four Hundred & Eighty-Six

1. I thought it was my alarm but it’s my mother calling me from Tel Aviv. She wants to know which pair of earrings I want.

2. Still so dark. What’s for breakfast? I’ll let them eat those donuts. I’ll run out and get coffee.

3. Coffee and candy corn.

4. I sit at the table and write out the recipe for roasted chicken. He says, “You should MAKE it and then give them this card.” I tell him that most people don’t want to eat hot chicken at 9:30 in the morning.

5. Auditing time. I set a timer for Instagram. You can really do that now. And it tells me that I’ve already reached an hour. The thing is, though, that what I often do is set my phone on the counter and let the stories run through so that I can get back to seeing the stuff from people I really want to see. So I’ve already met my time limit, even though I technically haven’t been on Instagram. Hmmm.

6. I make us take a group photo. We scrunch together on the sofa in front of the canvas of the trees. They are all little rays of light to me. I’m trying to do like what Michael did on his last day at Dunder-Mifflin. Just…let’s pretend that this is a normal day. I want to see you in the usual context. I don’t want the memory to be of good-bye. I want to remember the way we circled and ate and talked and prayed.

7. Hard cider.

8. I could say that nothing got accomplished today but that’s a lie. My heart has done heavy lifting.

9. The sound of rain against the roof.

10. I know the tears will come later.