My Sunday Ritual

I love Sunday. I love the Sunday paper. I love the fact that the Sunday paper contains a big, medium-difficulty crossword puzzle and a cryptogram. Most Sunday mornings my ritual is to accompany the working of these puzzles with wonderful coffee and a musical backdrop. Sometimes a little chocolate goes with the coffee. If the weather is fair, which it was not today, I go out on the deck or out by the backyard firepit and enjoy the outdoors with my coffee. And I don't want to talk to anyone. I want to veg and caffeinate in my pajamas without being disturbed. Sometimes I awaken knowing what music I want to listen to. This morning it was Eric Clapton's Unplugged. While searching through the cd's to locate this desired recording a memory washed over me. I sat for a moment to soak it up before pulling the cd out of its sleeve and placing it in the stereo. My copy of Unplugged, you see, is a copy. Bearing my ex's tiny, perfectly clear engineer's printing in Sharpie with its characteristic lefty slant. Years ago, when it became inevitable that we would part, we went through our music collection and divided the cd's into four piles. Mine, his, mine that he wanted a copy of and his that I wanted a copy of. Unplugged was in the fourth category. I had purchased it for him for his birthday soon after its release. I recalled listening to it on other Sunday mornings when we were still together. Music can be such a personal thing in the way that it infiltrates and describes and becomes a part of the soundtrack of our lives. Just those few, instantly identifiable opening notes of a familiar song can grab you and pull you into a long past moment. Perhaps inspire you to get up and dance. I close my eyes and hear myself singing along softly to one of my baby boys nestled sleepily in my arms. Or bellering along enthusiastically in a crowded concert hall. Pulled back into the present by the finishing-up-the-brewing-process gurgle emitted by the coffee maker, I closed the cd player and hit play. Good morning, Sunday. Nice to be with you again.