Fingers slowly pry open two of the razor-thin shades and vision slips through the open gap and then through a window pane. Visible is the disappearing dark black of the night sky being uncovered into a softer purple and then easing into an endless blue and a brilliant gold. Blink and it’s gone.
On the green grass, dew loiters, magnetized momentarily and heavily clinging to the blades shooting from the ground sharing space with the cobwebs outlined now in thin white lines by the same dew, all destined to soon disappear in an evaporating trick of the eye.
This is Tuesday morning.
Later today, Tuesday morning will give way to the midday and then, on this one particular day, unseen and without ceremony, one season, spring, will yield to another season, summer, as has happened without fail forever. Seasons swap as the sun and the moon align in a certain way for a certain time. Summer follows spring. This year Tuesday is the day for that transition. This year, some will say that transition happened weeks before as if summer were impatient for it’s own arrival or as if spring had somewhere better to go and left going there early.
Later today, what Tuesday morning started and let move to midday will drift into afternoon. The sun will warm everything outside. In times past, we would measure the warmth by documenting the mercury stretching upward, growing taller in some blood red streak on a rusty old Dr. Pepper thermometer nailed to the side of a house for so long that the paint underneath still looks new and unfaded. Now, though when we are curious how many degrees the heat can be measured in, we look to a bank building sign, garish, neon, tacky, spelling out in large numbers, between finance rates and the current time, how hot the now is. Time changes, time stays the same. Was it really that hot then as it is now, we wonder. A hot Tuesday then is hot Tuesday now. But maybe it is hotter now, we conclude.
Morning’s dew returns in the form of late afternoon humidity which stands upright but invisibly in the atmosphere like some warm barrier separating the afternoon from the evening. Like the certain alignment of the sun and the moon escorts spring into summer, if all conditions mix, a season of thunderstorms may transition in during this time. More likely, though, the afternoon will dissolve into the evening easily hurtling that barrier without much effort and without the aid of thousands of raindrops and gusty winds. The shadows of the trees grow a bit longer now shading selected places like they do on any other day, nothing remarkable about that no matter the day of the week even though it is the same, but different, every day.
The kaleidoscope of colors Tuesday morning ushered in is gone. It will be replaced though by a new palette as night gently, politely knocks on the door before easing that door open, creaky, squeaky noises and all, and saunters in, slowly, without waiting for an invitation to enter. The colors in the sky may be the same as the morning and may appear in reverse order from then but the textures of each will be different now, the gold will be faded as if tempered by the heat, the blue melting and wilting into purple or pink or orange before the soft black crawls in, then deepens with each ticking second before outlining all that can be seen highlighted by sparkling stars.
And just like that Tuesday is gone. With it, the potential, the possibilities, the hopes, all gone.
If I could, I would like to go back and ask Tuesday morning some questions.
I would start with, so, Tuesday morning, how does all this feel? I mean all this started today with you.
How does it feel to be the bleeding edge of potential when you showed up today? Does it disappoint you to know some of us woke up and looked past the here and now you brought and wished you were Friday afternoon or Saturday morning or sometime other than now? When we pushed sleep around in our eyes and groaned how we only needed a few more minutes of slumber grousing because here you arrived like you were some surprise, even though every week here you are, habitually, Tuesday morning, direct on the heels of Monday night, did that surprise you? Do you find some humor when someone tosses around a statement like, ‘Well, it’s Tuesday morning; at least it ain’t Monday morning’? Did you feel any added pressure with the season changing thing happening on your watch?
Do you ever grow weary of hearing us complain about how sometimes you are not what we really want? Would you tell us, if you could, that a life consists of as many Tuesday mornings as it does Friday nights or whatever other time seems better than right now? Would you remind us that wishing time away wishes life away? And would that remind us how valuable life really is? Would it make us understand how time is a deep reservoir we continually use that grows shallower with every new day? Blink and it’s gone.
Tuesday morning, it all started with you, so how does it feel?
Of course, there is no direct reply to that question. This particular Tuesday morning spoke without words. It spoke with the morning breaking early. It spoke in the sizzle of the midday heat. It spoke in the skin-soaking sweat of the afternoon. It spoke in the humid wall guarding the evening. It spoke in the encroaching gathering darkness of the night.
Maybe though within those things lies how Tuesday morning would answer if words were possible. Maybe if asked Tuesday morning would say to each of us, “Really, it all starts with you.”
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