Most of our existence is routine. We get up, get dressed, do our work, eat, sleep... the same stuff day after day. (But love can't be routine, can it? Love is always fresh.) Many people get depressed by that notion, but not me. Even the routine is fascinating. Every day I get up and make coffee, with only the most minimal variations. Remove coffee pot from coffee maker, rinse; remove previous day's filter and grinds from filter cone; put in trash. Fill pot with fresh water (seven cups), etc. But today does have a slight variation: nine cups. Alma and Cristina got home yesterday. Hooray! As I pour the water into the coffee maker, what am I thinking about? That changes. Maybe I'm thinking that I'm not really awake yet, the brain is sluggish. Caffeine, caffeine... but in fact, there is always something going on in our minds. I might be thinking about politics or sports, love, death, children, parenting, education, morality, astronomy, philosophy... Last night it snowed and it's snowing now (8:00 am). Close to two inches already. Not so routine. It's quiet and beautiful outside. Hopefully it won't be enough to wreak havoc on today and tomorrow's Nutcracker performances, but who knows. The forecast is not good. The Ohlsten's are supposed to drive down from NY and Jess is hoping to come up from Baltimore. That could be trouble, as the DC area has lots of snow forecast. Oh well, out of our control. Daniela stayed in Hershey last night. Good thing. I hope the shows don't get postponed or cancelled.
(Does art remove us from the routine? Perhaps it helps us to reconsider our very notion of routine. Science does that as well.) Last night we were at a Christmas party and I was talking to an acquaintance; we were catching up on our children. He repeated a number of times how proud he was of his daughter, a recent college graduate. I was just a little surprised – of course, how obvious. How can parents not be proud of their children? Yes, no doubt that can happen, but in those rare, sad cases, the lack of pride, too, would be fairly evident. Maybe. In any case, I was thinking about that recently. (In the photo: in Cristina's apartment at school.)
