Come Wednesday

I think when it gets to Wednesday I’m going to start living louder. Living bigger. Get out more and see more – big, wide attention. With all the time I have left.

It’s still later in February, the 24th, stretched out this week the rare leap year, and the streets of Portland are decorated in yellow and pink and purple, a canvas of annual flowers including daffodils, they so whimsical in their full-on appearance. Some wide awake and bursting yellow beauty already 10 days past, many, like in our yard, only a promise of the sun-like display to come. Mother Nature’s playing, little by slow, don’t want to give it up to the kids all at once – they’re mostly all of them big complainers as it is.

So a slow, steady unfolding of sparkling spring, light show all Fillmore-like, watch out on that Orange Owsley chirren, not too much all at once. I, yes, I see those retinal presents now on nearly-everyday walks, out there among Douglas firs and cedars and in our front yard the heaven-touching Ponderosa pine, which of course (the taking walks) is being blessed – the world hasn’t ended yet, my legs still work enough, I crawled out of bed in the dark, electrically grateful again. Casually walking up and down city streets is still allowed, if not encouraged. Can’t be surfing and streaming, thumb-texting and all technical and everything while breathing fresh February air, waiting on the lilacs to arrive, talk about purple haze and all of it up in my brain.

But back to the beginning, rising again just after 4:30 and with moments of meditation, morning coffees, a never-before-read Kerouac book, the wife up early and out in the cold dawning borrowing neighbors’ compost cans for all the excess yard debris she’s gathered – her thing – another handshake with old girl nature, and here I come down the basement stairs, flick on the tiny floor heater, open my boy’s rescued laptop seeing it still works, and my number one thought is, come Wednesday, live larger, get out in the Camry farther, cash in on abundance smattered all around all over the place all the time and enjoy the big barely-describable gift of simply being allowed to wake up one more time – Hey, look fella, gotcha another day – and you rest assured I’ll be paying with my best attention.

Pay attention. The current best exchange rate. My attention. Paid in full. I carried that down the steps today. Thinking about come Wednesday.