This tiny sentence follows a three-page-long paragraph that gives the details of Ives' life post Robert's murder. He goes for drives with his family. Watches old movies on the television. Takes his daughter on college visits. Attends funerals. Celebrates Christmas. All the normal, everyday things that fill his days. Yet, Robert is never far from Ives' thoughts.
It has been an everyday for me. Fridays are full of work and the anticipation of a weekend of rest. Nothing monumental happened. At the moment, I sitting in my parents' living room, watching the coverage of Pope Francis celebrating Mass at Madison Square Garden. I should feel inspired or uplifted or blessed. I don't. I'm tired. Dog tired. When I get home tonight, my plan is to make a drink for myself and go to sleep.
Tomorrow is my son's seventh birthday. We are having a party for him tomorrow, and then we will have another party for him on Sunday. By Sunday night, I will have eaten enough cake to feed a small African nation. These parties will be joyful. I will sing and laugh and be filled with love for my son.
Yes, tomorrow I will think of my sister who passed away. She was my son's godmother, and she made his birthdays festivals of spoiling. The pile of presents rivaled a Christmas haul. It made my sister incredibly happy to make my son incredibly happy. She will be the candle that will be missing from his cake this weekend. In the everyday, Ives thinks of his son. In my everydays this weekend, I will think of my sister.
Once upon a time, a dairy farmer named Lola lived every day of her life in the same way. Up at 3 a.m., muck out the barn, feed the cows, milk the cows, oatmeal for breakfast, put the cows out to pasture, cheese sandwich for lunch, drive the cows home, feed the cows again, chicken for dinner, clean the barn, bed. Every day. Every week. Every year.
Lola never got bored with her life. She loved cows and oatmeal and cheese sandwiches. They brought her great joy every day.
One day, Lola decided to have a hot dog for lunch. That afternoon, one of her cows died. That evening, her barn burned to the ground. The next morning, she woke up with a bladder infection. Pretty soon, the bladder infection turned into a blood infection. In two everydays, Lola was dead.
Moral of the story: stick to cheese sandwiches.
And Saint Marty lived happily ever after.
Transtromer writes about everydays, too:
Sketch in October
by: Tomas Transtromer
The rowboat is freckled with rust. What's it doing here so far inland?
It is a heavy extinguished lamp in the cold.
But the trees have wild colors: signals to the other shore.
As if people wanted to be fetched.
On my way home I see mushrooms sprouting
up through the lawn.
They are the fingers, stretching for help, of someone
who has long sobbed to himself in the darkness down there.
We are the earth's.
Adventures of STICKMAN
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