The Extraordinary Ordinary

When our oldest daughter, Maggie, got married, she asked us if we could host a gathering at our house for anyone who needed a place to hang out between the wedding and the reception. Mark and I were happy to oblige. We stocked up on beer, wine, soft drinks, and appetizers, and then hired one of the Mallory’s friends to stay at the house and set everything up while we were at the church. Most of our family and friends, along with our new son-in-law’s parents and out-of-town family came, and it was a lovely and relaxed time for our two families to get to know each other.

When the time came for us to head to the reception, Mark and I stayed behind to put the food away and lock up the house. When we got into the car Mark looked at me and said, “I think this is the happiest day of my life.” I smiled and said, “Me too, Mark.” We loved this new son-in-law of ours and this long-awaited day when everyone got to be in the circle of their infectious joy.

There were many happy occasions over the years. The birth of our three beautiful kids, their graduations from high school and college, Easter brunches and packed Christmas parties in our small house, social events and promotions at the med center, quiet dinners with close friends.

I remember all of those things vividly and with crushing fondness, but it is the ordinary days with Mark that I miss the most. The morning routines we both had, him often walking alongside the car while I was backing down the driveway to tell me something he forgot or to kiss me goodbye, the slow weekend days when we drank coffee and figured out our plans, the cold Saturday nights when we stayed in – him watching videos on Youtube, me scrolling the internet. There were our family Sunday dinners when the kids would all be here and he and I would cook together. Mark going to the grocery store beforehand, me folding the laundry. Our regular negotiations over what restaurant to go to to have a bite to eat, usually landing at our standby pizza or Thai restaurant. The walks in the neighborhood after dinner or up to the hardware store. Mark mowing the lawn, me vacuuming. The trips to the garden center where he would load the cart with vegetables to plant and me with flowers. Me saying, “I think we’re spending too much money,” and him saying, “I thought the point was to spend a bunch of money.”

For several summers there was a heron family in our neighborhood. It was at the other end of the block and if you happened to be by there the neighbors would point them out high in the trees. I could barely make the nest out and wasn’t entirely sure what I was seeing, but one day when I was walking home from the park there was one of the infamous herons standing on a car like a giant hood ornament. It was a stunning sight and neither the heron or I dared to move for several minutes. Last summer when I hadn’t heard any news of their return, I asked my neighbor if they were still around. “They came back,” she said, “and then it was awful. A hawk had been circling and had its sights on the nest and eventually dove in for the babies. The heron was screeching, the sound of it was terrible. It went on for the longest time and then she was gone and never came back.”

Like that heron, my nest was left barren of the husband I was not prepared to lose. Before Mark died I tended to think of babies and the elderly as being fragile, but then my husband didn’t make it through a Tuesday and my thinking changed. Alone for the first time in my life, I move forward in fits and starts without a partner or a clue. I am terrified on a daily basis and there have been many times when I wished a hawk would set its sights on me. Instead a life of one is taking shape and I am confident of nothing these days but that I hate every part of it.

But with a glance in the rearview mirror are the decades of coffee, conversations, dinners at home and out, the joy, the worry, the laughter, the tears, and the litany of mundane chores, and oh how I wish I’d known that it was those ordinary days that were the holy communion of my life.