The meaning of trivial

Listening

I am home alone.

The house is quiet ?

I don’t think so.

Doctor Phil is droning on downstairs in the living room. He is my morning theme-song filling the void which is this big house when it is only the dogs and me.

Like a beating heart the small plastic mantle clock, bought at Walgreens for a dollar ninety-nothing, sits atop the file cabinet in my office. My office, the smallest of the spare bedrooms made into a sanctuary, library, schoolroom, cave, stage and word-workroom by my daughter and her husband as a Christmas present. Their gift lent credence to my daily efforts and lifelong dreams. It’s meant to be shared with my husband, we have a partner’s desk, but it is mine mostly.

The incessant ticking of the little mantle clock was once annoying; it reminded me of how quickly time passes, it reminded me that my time was running out. I don’t need a constant reminder that there is less life forward.  And then its battery died. It’s a cheap piece of Chinese plastic, not worth the price of an EverReady, I said. I was glad to be rid of it.

The room seemed empty without that metronome. I’d look up to see how much longer before I had to leave for work and, oh yeah, I forgot, the clock was gone. Shifting my eyes to the lower right corner of my computer screen, which shows milliseconds silently, was more a nuisance then lifting my head and focusing on the ticking atop the file cabinet. I always wear a watch but turning my left wrist, lifting my sleeve, and focusing on my Timex, was even more annoying. It was the habit I was missing, it was the constant reality regarding how much time spent and how much time left, I missed.

I found a battery.

It ticks. I sit back and listen. Are those seconds gone, never again to be claimed, or are they like a bedside machine confirming a heartbeat? The little ticker isn’t shouting time lost or time wasted, it’s validating the seconds I am here to live them.

I turned off Dr. Phil. Though I could not actually hear his guest’s tragedies of life I knew the downstairs was filling with negative word bubbles. I don’t want negative anything brought to me between commercial interruptions about cars costing as much as a house, carpet half off and getting immediate medical help if your erection lasts more than four hours. I want positive. I want a soothing world. There is music now, a new anthem to my morning.

Seeing

The whiskered trees cast long shadows on the month-old snow blanketing the forest floor. The window I peer out of is frosted by the breath of the house. The sun on the sill is blinding as is its reflection on the dirty white behind the house where the trees are set back and farm equipment is parked. Stakes from last summer’s garden are like roadside markers, symbolizing where an accident claimed a life. In our garden they mean the peppers and tomatoes are but memories on our tongues until next season. The black netted deer fence flaps and sways in the wind which rocks across the wide expanse of iced over barren yard. We never turned the dirt and tidied the garden; we had a funeral to attend that weekend. The resting growing place stands monument to one too soon taken.

The gentle sounds and simple sights from this very chair are what my mornings are made of. The fan in my precious laptop just tuned on, the heat beneath my wrists is comforting even though I know it is taxing the tiny mechanical brain. I am noticing that which I have all too often dismissed as fleeting and unimportant. Odd that I thought these sights and sounds of my day were trivial, because the importance of the inconsequential is exactly what I write about all the time.

What is trivially important to you?