TIME KEEPERS

It is 6:45 am.  I open the blinds and listen more than look; it's the first day of Fall.  A few years ago I noticed that the crickets take over early morning sounds from the chirping birds sometime in the mid-summer, June perhaps.  Funny how you tell your time differently as you get older.  I heard a bird call, too, this morning, from the bed I made from a thin mattress on the floor upstairs.  One bird with three calls- a mockingbird? - and then it moved on.

I don't hear any early morning sounds from their house.  -My brother's house, I mean, where I stay now.  It's airtight.  I don't know what time it is when I wake up there.  Here, the crickets keep time for me.  I heard somewhere that they tell the temperature, too, with the speed of their rythm.  As I wait in the morning sounds, I look out of the window again.  I can tell by the mist and gray sky that the air will feel cool and good outside.

I saw the mail lady yesterday, in between loads to the car.  I had known her - well, the way you know the mail lady - for years.  She knows my little girl's dad a few streets over, and she knew his parents Judy and Bob too, before they died two fast years ago and left us behind.  Thank God Judy didn't see me and her granddaughter in this situation!  She would have keeled over then, for sure.   Running from town, selling our home and unsure about things, unsettled.  Looking out of windows and comparing homes based on morning sounds.  A great way to bring up a ten-year-old. 

The mail lady drove down the other side of the street, facing me, and I waved at her.  She didn't look up.  She is one person I came to know in this small town.  Maybe I KNEW her, past tense; it has been a few months since I stayed here regularly.  I didn't recognize the faces nor voices at the Arby's drive-thru window yesterday, so I know that we are moving on.  I wonder if - what's her name? - still works at the Starbucks up the street.  Maybe I will go find out after I shower.  Donna.

At the new place in the big city, I saw the mailman the other day.   He doesn't drive down the street with the mail.  He parks his truck and walks through the yards, dodging new piles of leaves.  He looked at me all cockeyed and chuckled like the old black actor in The Shining.  He is always cockeyed -and carefully nice, walking with a slight limp in his gait across the yard.  Maybe he is one of the first people I know in the new neighborhood.  I make a mental note to watch for him the next time I'm around in the daytime.  He looks like his name would be Gregory or Thurmond.