The Dishes Can Wait

I walk into the kitchen after dropping my wife off at work and eye the dishes in the sink and the pan, with scrambled egg crust, on the stove. This is my routine. Up at 6:00, feed the cats, make the coffee, read the sports and horoscope, wake up my wife, take her coffee in bed. We sit downstairs on white chairs and watch the water, stroke the cats, and rise slowly into the morning like sunrise. 

Sometimes color reflects off the houseboats across the channel and creates brilliant rippling reflections in the water. Then we go upstairs and look east at the sunrise over the masts of docked sailboats coming up across the bay.

I ask what she likes for breakfast - we settle on eggs or oatmeal or chicken sausage with fruit and toast and another cup. I ask what she wants for lunch, & when she needs us to leave to get her to work on time. Then she's off to shower and dress while I make her lunch and bag it, then I make breakfast and call her down, we eat - and then off we go, sometimes calling one of our children on speaker phone using her blue tooth in the blue prius. 

Over the Golden Gate Bridge we drive, through the  Eucalyptus forest in the presidio, past the mansions of Pacific Heights to Kaiser on Geary with its buses and taxis and people of all shapes crossing the street on their way to work, or to see my wife, their nurse.

And when I return home, I pour another cup, and wash the dishes and then my day begins.

But not today.  Today I think about my friend who texted me yesterday,  asking how one finds time to write: in the morning he has inspiration but no time, and in the evening he has time but no inspiration.

I text back: sometimes one must be a thief. And steal time.

I think about that as I look at the dishes and think about my life. 

And so I decide this morning to change things up & write this down - for me, for him, and for you.

This morning, the dishes can wait. ~ gb