You don’t know how it will end, your day, when you begin it, do you? You think you do. You have a fair idea. Plans are made, or not made, and you have a rough idea. During term time the routine is there to give a sense of sameness, of structure and security. Not much excitement, usually, on a day to day basis. Bookended by bed, the day is a series of actions. Like a script, in a way, a scenes flow into one another. Snooze button, shower, the simultaneous making of breakfast and packed lunches, the send-off to school, the drive to work. It all goes like clockwork although each day seems to have its glitches or little bonuses. That thing that was different but not surprising. The still banal thing you mention to a colleague over coffee or to your husband after bedtime is done. You make it a feature of your day, that little hiccup or perk on the days that go to plan.
You Don’t Know
Those blessed days that go to plan. We wish them away. Flick through them on the calendar. Write them off. Rattle them off as sleeps till the holiday, till Christmas, till birthdays. Cross them off as done and dusted. We don’t bask in their simple glory. We regret that retrospectively. The hamster wheel of school runs and bath times, looking back, is a reassuring time of easy living. Of knowing what comes next. Looking back.
In the moment, that security is all in your mind. An expectation born of repetition. An assumption. Is, was and always will be. Nothing more than a hope or prayer you believe in so deeply you think you know it to be true. Hope is merely hope, belief just belief. Reality is the only reality, caring nothing for your assumptions, your routine existence.
You don’t always know how your day will end. Dwelling on that is robbing yourself of life. Ignore it and plod along. Find contentment in the banality and security of you day.
[Written while waiting alone on a long, gloomy corridor on a Friday night outside the operating theater where my eldest was having bones set with wire. I had assumed I would be at home watching a film and drinking wine with my husband, our children tucked up in bed.]