TODAY IS FOR LIVING

At 5:00 a.m., on her way to work, Taylor marvels at the cool, autumn feel in the air although it’s only August. Arriving at her office, she stops her car and gazes at the soft pink sunrise caressing the starkness of the rugged Blue Mountains to the east. The sight makes her heart feel light and free. Not a bad way to start any day, she muses.

She climbs from her car and notices dead silence hangs in the air, waiting for her to create the next scene. Poised in front of her office building, key in hand, she freezes mid-motion not quite willing or ready to enter the reality of the world on the other side of the door. Instead she turns, walks to the concrete bench facing the cemetery in her charge and sits.

She sat outside at home the night before, as the temperature dipped with the sun, listening to the precious sounds that only come with warm days. The crickets played their legged instruments; the sprinklers added their own synchronized beat and the laughter of the neighborhood children tied it all together in a sweet song. It occurred to Taylor that this was the first opportunity she’d actually taken this summer to listen to the sounds around her. She was both saddened and enlightened by the revelation; realizing more time and energy had been spent worrying about the minutes slipping by, than enjoying the moments she’d actually been given and discarded.

On the bench, Taylor remembers how in childhood she managed to live life as it came, having at least one precious daily adventure to store away in her memory bank of treasured moments.

Five in the morning was the agreed upon time for ten year old Taylor to have a clandestine rendezvous with her new puppy-love, Lynn. Both of them had to sneak out of their homes in the early morning hours making their adventure her first, significant life-event.

Taylor, in last night’s clothing, jumped out of bed and tip-toed into the kitchen to peer at the illuminated clock on the stove; it read 4:30 in mellow green. A smile crossed her face as she realizes she awoke in time. She slid her grey thongs, lying by the back door, on her feet, quietly turning the door knob, escaping the confines of the old farm house. She released the chest full of air she hadn’t realized she’d been holding and stood quietly, ear to door, to see if her departure had somehow alerted her sleeping parents. No one stirred, except her dog Stubby who stood beside her, tail wagging in anticipation of Taylor’s loving caresses. Taylor grinned as she stroked the dog, smugly appreciating her success in the first leg of her journey.

Together, she and Stubby jumped from the porch to the grass, not wanting to risk walking down the sidewalk made of squeaky, weathered old boards that never failed to announce one’s comings and goings.

Taylor tore across the yard with Stubby joyfully at her heels. They stopped briefly at the weathered garage with peeling red paint. Sliding back the door a sliver, Taylor extracted a large blue fishing pole and a five gallon bucket from a darkened corner.

After walking halfway down the rough, rocky lane, Taylor caught a glimpse of Lynn as he turned from the highway onto the lane. Her heart went wild with excitement. He rode the Schwinn bicycle he was given for his birthday one month before. “My own sweet prince mounted on a shiny new bike,” she thought, almost like the King Arthur she’d recently read about in The Sword and the Stone. As he drew near, Lynn’s wide smile mirrored her own.

For the next hour, the moments stretch like characters in a film, moving in slow motion. They held hands as they circled the pond in search of their bumpy, slimy, green victims. Bull frog eyes cross and bulge in delicious anticipation as red material attached to a hook, on the fishing pole, dangled over their slightly emerged heads. Grand green trophies, pulled from the pond, one after the other, mound up inside the five gallon bucket. Lynn and Taylor erupted in gales of laughter as they gave chase to a few brave frogs, not willing to be contained in the bucket; frantic in their pursuit to reach the safety of the pond.

All too quickly, the sun rise signals the end of their adventure. Slowly they turned toward each other, leaned in and gently touched lips for a farewell kiss; Taylor’s first. She kept her eyes open to savor the face of the first person who liked her. Taylor, the person whose mother told her hippo’s can’t dance, when she’d innocently asked for ballet lessons; Taylor, whose step-grandmother informed her that she shouldn’t worry because homely girls, like herself, generally grew up to be pretty; Taylor, who in all of her ten years, had never heard the words “I love you” even from her parents.

Lynn opened his eyes and simultaneously they smile at their boldness.

“I love you,” he said. Pride and hope soar deep within Taylor’s heart; making the thought of flying like a dove, a possibility.

“Thank you for loving me,” she whispered as she hugged him fiercely. She turned quickly away, running toward the lane and home; tears of joy splattering on her thin cotton blouse.

“Hey!” he yells, “next weekend, same time?”

She turned and nodded. “Exactly the same!” she replied, the moment forever etched on her heart.

The sprinklers in the cemetery pop, hiss, sputter into action, drawing Taylor back to the present. “What memories have I made lately?” she wonders. Opportunities to surround herself with people, laughter, love and experiences all pushed aside by endless tasks and calendar pages full of commitments. The “have to” and “must do” minutes of her life overpowering and imprisoning the rare occasions she’d been able to drink in the essence of the people and things around her; disheartened, like the frogs of her youth, desperate yet unable to get back to the pond.

A newly revised script for the day plays out in her head, guided by memories of frogs, first love and hope. Taylor remembered hauling that five gallon bucket back down the lane to the pond later that morning long ago; compassion dictating the need to grant life instead of death. Memories of jumping, clapping, herding and guiding those “chirping,” “ribbitting” frogs back toward their pond-home now makes her laugh and it feels grand.

Taylor’s ground crew stands by the locked door to the office behind her, confused and bewildered; not knowing what to make of their boss, her back to them on the concrete bench, in belly-rolling laughter.

“Change of plans today, guys” she says to the air in front of her. She turns to the crew, “Grab your lunches and call your families. We’re going to the mountains to have a picnic, pick huckleberries and play in the river. The dead don’t need our help today. Today is just for living!”