Practicing to Walk Like a Heron

Another Day in Your Life

150 Another Day in Your Life The thing is this rain keeps falling and the long notion of another day stays relentless as a ringing phone. What if you made up who you are and why your mother never ate cereal, why your father was a night watchman in his own home? You keep things tidy and full of happy endings. You rearrange the empty jars in the cellar, remembering the way you strained the apricots, blueberries, raspberries, how you stirred the apple butter, sealed and labeled each jar. You sort through the gladiolus bulbs lying on the frayed window screens, pull off new tubers, count them to see if you’ll have too many in the summer when the wheatgrass around your house has grown so thick the cats can hide. You swipe the webs from corners of the windows, go back upstairs, sit down with a drink, the windows open, and you smile as you tell yourself the same old jokes your father told. ...