For use: Sunday, Febryary 5, 2000

mfinley.com: "A Day in the Life"

by Michael Finley

I wake up around half past six this morning. I slide out of bed, grab some clothes, and tiptoe up to my office.

I have been heartsick all week because an article I agreed to write is not going well. I thought I could write it my way -- broad, persuasive, imbued with the spirit of gee whiz. But the editor, whom I haven’t worked with before, wants it in straight business-ese. He wants facts that I don’t know, and quotes that were never said. So I sit at my keyboard for about 90 minutes, achingly twisting the existing quotes in the direction the editor wants. The draft finished, I pop it in the email to him, with a note of explanation. It doesn’t feel good; either I won’t get paid, or I'll say the wrong thing to the editor. It's all pointed toward a bitter end. Why couldn’t he have looked at my writing before he hired me, and seen what I am good at? Ironically, the story is about choosing the right people for projects.

I tiptoe onto the snowy porch to drag in the two Sunday papers. I lay them out on the table with my cereal. But it's February. The election is over, the Superbowl is over, and I can’t bring myself to look at the travel section. All this paper and no real news.

It's time for the first of the dog's three daily walks. Lately I have kept him away from the big public dog yard by the airport. He is hopelessly dominant and has cabin fever so bad that within a few minutes he is always in some bare-toothed showdown with some other snow-crazed animal. The field is white from the night's snow, but it only masks a few hundred dog turds. This year people have picked up after their dogs better than last year. Surprisingly, Beau is behaves pretty much like a gentleman today. I only have to call out to him a few times over the course of an hour. Poor dog, he can’t help being a jerk.

When I get home, the phone rings, and I am talking to Carol, whom I have known for 30 years. "Mike," she says, "Don passed away."

Don was one of my housemates when I was in college. He and I never quite got along, without actually disliking one another. We were both ex-seminarians, but I always cast him as more of a goody-goody than me. As a housemate he was like a camp counselor, condescending and disapproving.

Don came down with multiple sclerosis when he was in his thirties, and he had it bad -- 25 years in a nursing home unable to talk, unable to do anything, before the disease snatched his last bit of life away from him. Carol doesn’t tell me the details, but I agree to attend services for him tomorrow.

Poor Don -- nearly everyone abandoned him, including his kids. He could be very difficult and rigid. Yet he managed to live a life at the home. Carol was proud of Don's competitiveness and tenacity. The funeral will be the first I have been to someone in my generation. The first in years, anyway.

Rachel is having some women over tonight to talk about the emotional climate at our son Jon's school -- a teacher and another parent. She was up all night cleaning for them. My contribution is to vacuum the floors and straighten the downstairs up.

Daniele calls me around two and asks me to pick her up at her friend Michele's where she spent the night. The streets are foggy and bumpy from packed snow. When I get to Michele's four kids, 16 to 19, climb in -- Daniele, her boyfriend Roy, Michele and her boyfriend Ted. Daniele thanks me for the lift. They are splendid in their black leathers and darker attitudes. Michele and Ted want to be dropped off at Ted's house. Fine with me. I decided a long time ago that I like them. Still, I turn up the NPR station on the way home -- Michael Feldman is muttering out the side of his mouth -- partly to make them factor him into their worldview.

Back home Daniele and Roy sneak up to her room and close the door behind them and turn up her stereo. Jon and I sit and watch TV, which seems very interesting today -- Steve Martin movies all day on Ch. 29, and Bill Murray on another. Then we switch back and forth between the Pro Bowl and the XFL game in San Francisco. We agree the XFL game was more fun to watch, but it's like watching a train rocking on its tracks. The players exhibit great anguish trying to win, and you find yourself worrying about them just a little.

The second walk of the day is at Como Park. Beau and I stroll past the snow sculptures, and through a little grove of woods. I do not let him pee on the art. Beau seems more patient to me now. He will be five in August. I have finally realized that he is happiest when I run his life. That without me, his life is completely confusing to him. He isn’t an especially good dog -- especially in public. But I am sometimes touched by how this arrogant, fastidious creature has nevertheless placed himself entirely in my care. He has given his life to me. Despite being peculiar and proud, he is also very dear to me, and the day is coming when I will miss him.

I heat up a frozen pizza for Rachel and me. It is terrible. The house is ready for her meeting now, and when the women arrive, Beau and I slip upstairs, to give them privacy. Beau goes to sleep on a big plaid pillow, his chin on his paws. A few feet away I hear Jon blasting away in his game world, and the dying cries of his victims.

I check Napster, and program it to download a duet between Duke Ellington and John Coltrane -- "In a Sentimental Mood." We all watched the jazz special on PBS the last couple of weeks. The music is still in my head.

After it downloads, I double-click it and the room fills with the plaintive sounds of piano and sax, and occasional exploding asteroids.

I push myself away from my desk and step to the window in stocking feet. Snow is falling again, like it has fallen almost every day. The departing red lights of a station wagon turn silently left at the corner. Time for the day's last walk -- maybe under the twisty oak trees at Newell Park, or just a quick walk by the railroad tracks near home.

And it strikes me that everything that matters to me is breathing with me right this moment, under this gently heaving roof..