Today I Will Cry a Little

Some days I want to be flat, like the light in my backyard this morning. It’s bland, soft, and with little definition. It’s the kind of day when my back neighbor’s dog barks and the sound echoes off the fence and wraps itself around me like a comfortable blanket. I am safe and bored, with nothing much to do, and that’s just fine.I wait for the little things to happen. I look around, across, up and down. A crow is on a utility wire above me. He caws and bobs his head at me, making sure I am doing okay.These are my slow days. They are the days between my jobs as a television journalist. I need days like these to bring me down from the speed of the fast-paced life of a news person.The headlines beckon and I rush into the world with the urgency of a firefighter trying to save a burning house. Unfortunately, most of the time I don’t save the house, I usually get there too late. I arrive just when the victims return home to cry over their losses. I get there just in time to see them stumble over the ashes of things they once cherished. Just in time to get their reactions to what happened to them. I point a camera at their shocked expressions and ask them to express their pain as my camera person zooms in to get a closeup of their tears.The hooting of the mourning dove and the soft rumble of the airliner high in the paint brushed white clouds above me, circling in for a landing at LAX keep me present in the smallness of me.My warm cup of coffee at my side, loose sweat pants, flip-flops and my 14-year-old border collie mix at my feet are simple pleasures that fold their arms around me and speak “there, there.”I watch as the blades of lawn grass silently stretch awake as the sun dries their dew covered backs.The slow is where I place myself today. It is how I reacquaint myself to myself. I inhale and stop. I…

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