An Ordinary Tuesday
Chapter 1
At six o'clock, Ruth puts a check beside the last item on her list. She has finished her shift at the shop, collected a prescription, returned a call, and put the damp towels back through the dryer. Dinner is in the oven. There is nothing remarkable about the day, though it has been full.
Her sister calls while Ruth is taking plates from the cabinet.
“How was your day?”
“Fine. Busy.”
Ruth leans against the counter. Through the kitchen window she can see the neighbor bringing in a striped chair cushion. She thinks about the moment at the shop when a customer showed her a photograph of an enormous tomato. Both women had laughed at the ruler placed beside it, as solemnly as though the tomato were evidence in a trial.
“Actually,” Ruth says, “there was this tomato.”
It is the first thing from the day she wants to describe.
Later, the list remains on the table. None of the checked boxes mentions that conversation. It also doesn't mention the lunch she ate standing up, the song she turned off when the phone rang, or the ten minutes she spent searching for the prescription number before leaving home.
The list is an accurate record of completed tasks. It is a poor account of what the day felt like to live.
Two accounts of the same day
If Ruth described Tuesday through obligations, it would sound like a sequence of jobs: work, errands, laundry, dinner. If she described it through moments, we would hear something else. She enjoyed a ridiculous photograph. She was irritated by the search for a number. She wanted to hear the end of a song.
“I need a more interesting life” is a large conclusion to draw from one evening. Ruth can begin closer to what happened. She enjoyed an unhurried exchange. She would have liked to sit down for lunch. She was curious about the song after it stopped.
Think of a recent ordinary day. You may remember a task first, especially if it was difficult or unfinished. Stay with one scene for a moment. Where were you? What were you doing? Was there anything you wanted to continue, finish, or stop?