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The sweat collects across my upper lip as I zone in on the fine print of the instructions for my new alarm clock. The booklet is about the size of a large business card, with print so small, each time I read it I see something different. ‘Press the arrow’ upon second glance, looks a lot like ‘Punch the alarm’. I’m tempted to do the latter. Struggling to read the fine print combined with the added heat from the afternoon sun pouring in through the window is now causing stress sweat to dampen more personal places than just my moustache. Anything worthwhile takes a little effort, I tell myself as I pause to blow down the neck of my tee-shirt. The alarm clock arrived from Amazon within 24 hours, which is impressive, considering it may take me twice as long to set the actual alarm, as I alternate between pressing it and punching it. When it’s all over, my phone will no longer be on my bedside table. All it ever was to me at night was a distraction. A clock that’s just a clock is all I need. That, and my ability to focus again for more than a nano second. COVID and its restrictions on life has left me wandering through my days barely able to finish … I wonder if the neighbour had her baby yet? 

I set down the booklet, satisfied that my alarm is set for tomorrow. I look forward to reading a book tonight without stopping after each page to respond to every ding, dang, dong or buzz.  I can wholeheartedly be swept away to 1920’s Ireland or tossed into the bedlam of 1980’s New York, gripped by drama or mystery, without the impulse to take a quick peek at IG (that’s what the kids call it) to glimpse ‘a quick way to upgrade my avocado toast’ or watch a dog skateboarding through suburbia. Selfies from friends and family can now wait until morning. I need to sharpen what COVID has dulled.

I head back downstairs to the kitchen. I stand at the island with one hand on my hip looking around the room before heading back upstairs to grab laundry from the bedrooms. Might as well have laundry going while I do whatever else it is I need to do. Laundry goes in. I’m back in the kitchen. I’ve strategically left the bread maker on the table so when in doubt about how or where to start, my eyes are drawn to the maker of bread. Today seems like a Challah day so I grab the eggs, flour, yeast, yadda yadda.  Done. I’ve got a couple of hours before the dough is ready. 

From the corner of my eye I see the Instant Pot. Great time to whip up some dal - lentils, brown sugar, garlic, onion, ginger, cayenne, cumin. The click of the sauté button has the spices slipping around in oil at the bottom of the stainless steel, 8 quart bucket. A nice, brownish red sauce thickens and burns my eyes. The house fills up with a spicy warmth while the bread maker whirrs on the table, kneading the dough tirelessly.  I feel like an Amish woman with super powers - standing in the middle of the room doing nothing at all while things are magically being created around me. Also known as ‘a woman with electricity’. Drop in the lentils, fill up the water, seal the lid and wait. A little white rice and that’s lunch for the week.  

I know there are other people in the house but I’m in my own world and can’t stop to connect with them now. I can feel their presence at the outer edges of my reality - my Amish superhero reality. It’s as if I’m on an island and everyone else is on the mainland waving to me as they wait to catch the ferry to come to me. There is a dense fog around my island that muffles sound and blurs my vision. I keep busy while I wait for them, while I wait for something.

Next, I start digging my farmers hands into the greasy meat of a roasted chicken, pulling chunks off the bone. Suddenly, the alarm errantly goes off upstairs. I hurry up the steps to shut it off, wiping my hands on a tea towel like a mechanic rushing to answer the garage phone.  I don’t actually know how to shut it off yet though. It wasn’t supposed to go off until tomorrow morning. Is it tomorrow morning? The instructions either say Hold the home button or Home the hold button to stop it. As the earsplitting beep gets louder I am told by my youngest son that I am disturbing the making of a Tik Tok video down the hall. That wasn’t even on my to-do list today but I actually feel proud of that.  What kind of maniac wants their kids on Tik Tok anyway? Is it Tik Tok or the Tik Tok? So I hold, press, slam and aggressively hunt and peck around the new alarm clock to shut it down. 

Silence.  

Back downstairs I go. I hear my son say to his friend on Facetime, “My mom can’t work her new alarm clock.” followed by giggles in crackling adolescent male voices. If I wasn’t on my island engulfed by fog, I might have chirped back with a middle-aged mom quip like “Ok Tik Tokking Tik-Tokkers, you set the alarm!”. Good thing my quip bank is closed during COVID.

As I walk back down, I notice all the dust on the carpet of the stairs. I grab the vacuum and give them a good once over.  While the vacuum is out, I might as well do the rug in the front room and the runner in the hall. And there’s a fair bit of dirt by the back door too.  A quick Swiffer of the hardwood floors and under the cabinets and tables is in keeping with clean rugs. Can’t have one without the other.  Sacrilege.

Wait. My actual to-do list...what is on my actual to-do list anyway?

Lesson plans for the week, make food, schedule a doctor’s appointment, get the car serviced, read and do research for a second book, write a blog post, work on my book edits.  

Like a lot of lists, some of it is practical, like food and tuned up wheels. But part of my list is pure bucket-filling work that feeds me in a mystical way that makes my insides feel like glitter and cool running water. I must have lessons for the week or class will be sad, empty, and boring as hell. But I need to write or my spirit feels sad, empty, and strangled - my own kind of hell.  

The chicken is stripped and tossed in the roux.

I hear a beep. I flip through my phone, check emails and socials while every surface around me is covered in flour, lids and bottles, foil wrapped butter blocks, humming kitchen appliances and bubbling pots.  But the floors are clean.  The dough is finally done so I braid it, egg wash it and chuck it in the oven. Another beep. I check my phone again and get lost in some writers' group posts about how everyone’s projects are coming along. It’s inspiring. Then I remember how far I still have to go to get my book in good shape. Beep again. It’s the dal. Toss that in Tupperware. Make someone lunch. Who though?  My youngest? Or was that yesterday? No - that’s every day. Everyone else helps themselves today.  We move around the kitchen like toy hockey players jerking around on a magnetic table, just missing each other as we glide in and out of the space near the dishwasher. Clean up. Take the bread out of the oven and slice it up. Finish the pastry for the chicken pot pie topper. Clean some sinks. Change up laundry.  Re-stack the magazines. Clean out the inside of the diffuser and check that all the rooms have Kleenex boxes. Lose an hour doing something I can’t remember then change into workout clothes.  Look at real estate flyers, throw out old sticky tack and receipts from the junk drawer, make up some soda stream bottles, and look for leftover seed packets from last year's almost-garden. Look at squirrels in the tree in the backyard. Literally ... squirrel! I notice that I’m in workout clothes and remember I was headed out. Go for my run/walk along the water because if I don’t, a breakdown is imminent. 

I can’t hear any beeping now or see a kitchen appliance. I run the first twenty minutes along my usual route, headed toward downtown, then my knees message me to walk. I avoid eye contact with strangers and work hard to stay distant. I even make audible tsk tsk noises as I pass people stopped on the bridges watching the ducks directly under the signs that say ‘do not stop on bridge’.  I’m that lady now.

As I try to mentally review my to-do list, I cave in and join the rebels stopped on the foot bridge. Screw it. Dumb rule anyway. I look down to see ducks diving, splashing, eating, trotting across chunks of ice then swimming away.  I stroll to the rocky shore and watch the swans bathing and diving. They’re slower and calmer. They preen, eat, duck their long necks under the cold deep waters and float in circles near the rocks.  I watch. It’s amazing.  Ducking and swimming, squawking and floating.  Not once did any of them look up. It’s as if the throngs of people, lost, lonely and dazed, exist on the other side of a one way mirror, invisible to them. Freedom is their distraction, not us. Looking up at people would only keep them from swimming. I stare some more, wondering when I might be distracted by life again. I feel a surprise breeze lift off the shore and chill my shins. The soft looking feathers on the outer layer of the swans in front of me rise and fall gently. The ducks bob in the waves; their beaks and bellies filled with treats from around the rocks, each creature literally swept up in the moment. 

I miss that.

The fitness tracker on my smart watch buzzes, reminding me to get moving again. I stay put. It buzzes again. I let the vibration repeat, ignoring it willfully.

I return home. The alarm is going off upstairs again. I go slowly. I don’t engage with the tiny instructions in the maddening little book. I figure it out. Silence.

If I can’t read instructions, I’m free to experiment. Timed bread, timed soup, a finite set of steps to vacuum. A 60 min workout...okay 40. Follow the steps, get the same results each time. Control. It’s feeding me in all the wrong ways. I have those soul-igniting nuggets on my to-do list that keep getting buried beneath the fine print that I thought mattered. I’m working my list in the wrong direction. I want to float and duck below the surface without looking, or planning ahead, and dig around where it’s murkier but the rewards are juicier. So many buttons, so little life. Distractions at the cost of surprise and wonder. The clock and the birds are both part of my wake-up call - the call to let go. Instead of cooking all day, I will choose to feed myself - write, or walk, or sit or watch birds (I know how that sounds)…or nothing in particular. I’ll buy pasta on my way home from work, a jar of plain old red sauce and we will eat while I read from the new chapter I wrote. We’ll ALL get fed, wrapped up in store-bought steam and time, instead of separated by fog. And the alarm will go off when I tell it to, or not.

By Carol Sloan

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