What goes around

I need help today, I say dully, after too many nights of too little sleep and a cough that won't go away. The rains have descended and the allergies too and I'm feeling low and dim and all alone.

I'll help you, she says, and she lugs two grocery sacks in from the trunk. She's chosen the heavy ones with gallons and cans and her arms hurt, but she's beaming.

I need to rest today, I pine, piling my woes on the kitchen counter.

I'll make you a schedule, she says, and she bends over a pad then posts it on the refrigerator.

Relax Scedule

Sun 12:00 to 1:00
Mon 11:00 to 12:00
Tues 1:00 to 2:00
Wed 10:00 to 11:00
Thurs 9:00 to 10:00
Fri 10:00 to 11:00

Now I'll set the timer, she says, and you go lie on your bed.

And if you need to schedule a makeup time, she adds in a stroke of management genius, write in on a piece of paper and give it to me before.

She's thought of everything, you see, everything I need, and she gives it to me in the same way her needs have been tended and timed all these years into a sane and healthy rhythm. A time for this, a time for that. I take to my room and close the door. She turns the dial on the timer, and I feel it rushing back to me in a flood, all of it coming around again in terms never more certain, never more genuine, and right on schedule.

I am loved.