Sunday was better

Most days aren't like last Saturday. Usually I find the soccer field. Usually I don't take the kids to Target with me. Usually people don't run red lights as we're heading toward them.

Sunday I got the girl a playdate. Sunday the boy had a five-hour birthday party at the Tukwila Fun Center. Sunday I jogged around the Seward Park loop. I shopped the organic grocery, ate my first pluet. Each time I got back into my car, I'd turn on the ignition and the song on the radio was an old favorite. "My Best Friend's Girlfriend" (The Cars). "Every Day I Write the Book" (Elvis Costello). For dinner we had sweet corn, grassfed burgers, sweet potato fries. The argula seeds were in the ground, and I knew they'd come up.

Monday and Tuesday (so far) have been even better. I emailed coach Andrew and apologized. My son has lost interest in his favorite TV programs. I found an illustrated copy of the complete Narnia series for $9.98.

And last night my husband's recipes and foraged food were featured at Lark Restaurant here in Seattle, where John Sundstrom of James Beard Award fame (and his wonderful staff) cooked them to perfection. Porcini crostini. Miniature crabcakes. Farro with a chanterelle cream sauce and local veal (yes, I ate veal. I have not eaten veal since 1977). Huckleberry cobbler with ice cream. I made new friends and caught up with old ones, learned how to marinate a squirrel, reminisced about my high school years in NYC.

Over a late night Campari and proseco with grapefruit juice, a few of us stragglers decided what life boiled down to: Work and Love.

And then the sunrise over Lake Washington this morning, a deep breath of the damp morning air before the all the car exhaust has wrecked it.

Nope, most days are not like last last Saturday. Most days are more like this poem:

Driving Montana

The day is a woman who loves you. Open.
Deer drink close to the road and magpies
spray from your car. Miles from any town
your radio comes in strong, unlikely
Mozart from Belgrade rock and roll
from Butte. Whatever the next number
you want to hear it. Never has your Buick
found this forward a gear. Even
the tuna salad in Reedpoint is good.

Towns arrive ahead of imagined schedule
Absorakee at one. Or arrive so late-
Silesia at nine - you recreate the day.
Where did you stop along the road
and have fun? Was there a runaway horse?
Did you park at that house, the one
alone in a void of grain, white with green
trim and red fence, where you know you lived
once? You remembered the ringing creek,
the soft brown forms of far off bison.
You must have stayed hours, then drove on.
In the motel you know you’d never seen it before.

Tomorrow will open again, the sky wide
as the mouth of a wild girl, friable
clouds you lose yourself to. You are lost
in miles of land without people, without
one fear of being found, in the dash
of rabbits, soar of antelope, swirl
merge and clatter of streams.

Richard Hugo