Tuesdays
There are many things that the people, young and old, in our home do not agree on. We agree on the Patriots, Saturday night Live and reruns of the Simpsons.  We have to take turns with the Bluetooth to listen to music in the car. The whining that  happens in the car when a song happens to pass the five minute mark is almost unbearable.  And food is sporadic and plenty, picked apart and thrown away so quickly,.
When it comes to Tuesday though, we all agree. Tuesdays are the worst day of the week. I am sure we are not the only family to feel this way and it never seems to get easier. Even on a vacation week like this where we all had Monday off! I was sure I would wake up and dance through the day with the vigor and energy of renewed Monday. Monday, that day that promises a fresh start. The day that means that children go back to school and I can resume getting paid for work (rather than that voluntary job of parenting).
But by Tuesday most people have already thrown in the towel. And its only Tuesday. And there are still three more days left until the weekend. And no one really likes Wednesday either so you can't just go to bed early and get to the next day. Tuesday you are stuck idling outside a Ninety Nine waiting for your food when you really want to be sitting at the Ritz. It's just crappy and unfair. I try and mix it up with Taco Tuesday, and overdramatized episodes of This is Us and promises of things to come.
This Tuesday Jay had overtime. He has overtime all week. And he hates his job, a job that is tedious and exhausting and frankly just soul sickening. So he didn't get to the gym and he didn't go to the meeting and its like -5 degrees out and my lovely son pounced on him like a tiger the second he walked through the door. Tuesday.
I got to the gym and went to the meeting and started my day off bright and hopeful. At 1030 I learned that a young woman I had been trying to help in AA had impulsively thought that there was something left in a high to get her through something, maybe the thought of Tuesday. And died. A little light going off in Danvers, a 12 year old girl left an orphan and a mother left devastated. Again. I drove through Wenham and then right past my patients house into Topsfield all the time thinking about how that little girl with the ponytailed hair and the pajama bottoms could be dead.
Yesterday I looked in the obituaries because that's what you do for fun when you work for hospice or are Irish or are just a little dark and morose. There was a picture of a three week old baby right next to a lovely photo of an 103 year old woman and then there is Glenna. It doesn't make any sense.
Tuesday Sadie got in to her first choice college and we all cheered! Nora had a friend from school over and we watched the news guy tell us that there is snow in the forecast.
A snowday.
Now that could shake up Tuesday.
A snowday on Thursday gives Tuesday a little hope.
Just for awhile.
When the snow falls I'll think about Glenna. I'll think about her beautiful laugh and the way that I saw her eyes light up when she talked about her daughter. I'll smell the season, the clean air and the cold on my cheeks. My children will be happy. Or maybe they won't but at least it won't be Tuesday.