The darkness was descending. It was not there yet, but it was descending. The man knew that it was coming, he just didn’t know when. It always came, eventually. Sometimes he could feel it descending slowly. Other times it descended quickly. His wife understood and he was thankful for that. She called it “crawling back into the shell,” and said that it was a Cancerian trait. Crawling back into a shell was certainly what it felt like. He would awaken and realize that the darkness, which had not been there the day before, was there now. It would grow darker over the course of the day and by evening he had retreated deep into his shell. The man would become very withdrawn and quiet. He would hardly speak for days, keeping almost completely to himself.
Sometimes he could work through the darkness. The man loved to work. Whether creatively in his studio, in the printing plant at his day job, in their yard, around their house or on the practice tee at the golf course, work was what uplifted, sustained and defined him. At times his best creative work came while he was in his shell. Other times his mind, spirit or body simply would not have it. These times were the toughest. It became a double-edged sword. He would lie in bed wanting to rise and work but could not bring himself to do so. And because he could not, he retreated further into his shell. Despite wanting to get up and be productive, he would have neither the energy nor the inclination. He could rise and function on the days that his shift was on at the plant, but that would take all that he could muster. The days he was off he would eventually force himself to get up and find something constructive to do, even if it was just puttering in the yard or the studio. That would often help the man to begin emerging from the shell.
The darkness would sometimes lift as quickly as it had descended and he would emerge from the shell. Sometimes it would occur more gradually and take days or weeks to come out the other end. The darkness was not there at that particular time, but it was always lurking.
The alarm on his cell phone began playing the familiar jingle. The man rolled over and tapped the snooze button. It was three o’clock in the morning, but he had been awake and dozing in and out for about half an hour. The man was a morning person. He loved to get up early and work, the earlier the better. His shift at the plant began at six-thirty a.m. On those days he was up by four, out of the house by five and at work by six with half an hour to spare. His day job was working for a large printing corporation in the prepress department. The man liked his job very much and worked hard at it. He got along well with his supervisor and co-workers. He worked twelve-hour shifts, from six thirty in the morning until six thirty in the evening. The workweek was three days on and four days off. The shifts rotated from one end of the week to the other once a month. The man was very fortunate to have his job, a fact that he knew well.
On the days he was off he kept the same schedule but rose an hour earlier in order to be in the studio by four o’clock. His ideal day consisted of rising early, working for as many hours as his mind would have, eating breakfast or lunch with his wife and spending the remainder of the day functioning as a husband and human being. He never worked in the evening and was always in the bed by ten p.m. at the latest.
The man lay in bed thinking about the workday ahead. He kept a carefully organized list of his tasks for the day and went by it meticulously. Today’s list consisted of editing and posting his blog, working on chapters for his new book, researching the purchase of a laptop and printer, yardwork and feeding the birds. The alarm went off again. The man turned the alarm off and went downstairs to the kitchen. He slept in a separate bedroom so as to not disturb his wife when he rose to work.
In the kitchen he turned on the lights over the stove and the sink. He filled the Corningware kettle with water, put it on the stove and turned on the eye. He took three eggs out of the refrigerator, placed them in a small saucepan, covered them with water, put them on the back eye of the stove and turned it on. He went downstairs to the studio, flipped the light switch and booted up his computer. The man then went back upstairs to his bedroom. He turned on the lamp, made his bed, got dressed and headed back downstairs.
The kettle was boiling. He turned off the eye, poured three scoops of coffee into the French press and filled it two-thirds with the hot water. He put the top back on the press. He turned the eye off under the eggs, took the saucepan to the sink, ran cold water over the eggs and peeled them. He washed the saucepan, placed it back on the stove, pushed the handle on the press down and poured the coffee into his Yeti. He added sugar using a long handled teaspoon, then took the carton of half and half from the fridge and added just enough. The long handled spoon striking the sides of the Yeti while stirring the coffee sounded like a small bell ringing. He returned the half and half to the fridge, washed out the French press, placed it and the glass sugar jar back on the tray beside the stove and wiped down the stovetop and counter. The clock on the stove read four forty-five. This was his routine every morning. He turned off the lights and headed downstairs to the studio.
Sitting down at the computer, he launched his word processor and took a sip of coffee from the Yeti. This was the time of day he cherished, the time for him to work doing what he loved best. He wrote a weekly blog and had just published a book based on growing up as a boomer in the suburbs. The book sold extremely well and a lot of people encouraged him to write another. That was what he was working on at the time, but this morning he was making corrections to his blog before posting it. He had written the blog the previous morning and his wife had edited it. She edited all of his work. The two of them were wordophiles and sometimes got into serious discussions over grammar and punctuation. He loved his wife very much and was thankful that she worked with him to make his writing better.
He made the edits, posted his blog and resumed working on the next chapter of his book. He worked until around eight when his wife brought Tilley, their whippet, downstairs for her morning excursion into the back yard. Tilley bounded into the commons area and ran to the studio to see him, as she did every morning before going outside. She jumped up, put her front paws on him and buried her head in his lap. He hugged and petted her after moving her paws away from his chest because her nails were like razors, even though they were kept well trimmed. Tilley wagged her tail vigorously, jumped down and bolted out the back door. “Will you let her back in when she’s ready?” his wife asked.
“Certainly.”
“How long have you been up?”
“Since three.”
“You’re not normal.”
“I know. Normal is boring.”
She groaned and headed back upstairs. Tilley scratched at the door and the man let her back in the commons area. He wiped her paws with the towel that hung by the back door and opened the door leading in the house. She ran back upstairs and he shut the door behind her. He worked in the studio for about another hour, researching the laptop and the printer that were on his to do list. He had found one of each but was hesitant about ordering them. He was like that, especially when making a major purchase. He would research and know that the product he had selected was correct, but it would sometimes take weeks before he finally pulled the trigger. He bookmarked the pages for the laptop and printer, checked the items off of his to do list, shut down the computer, turned off the light and went upstairs to make his wife breakfast and to feed Tilley.
After breakfast he changed into his work clothes and went outside. It was early fall and time to aerate and overseed the front and back yards. The man went into the basement, pulled his aerator from its corner and took it outside. He then topped up his old John Deere tractor mower with gas, pumped up the back tires, checked the oil, cranked it and pulled it out from the shed under the sunroom. Tilley would be hiding in her bed by now. She did not like loud noises. He hooked the aerator to the back of the tractor and made several laps around the back yard, then the front yard. He had decided not to cut the grass before overseeding. There had not been any rain in this part of Georgia for over a month and both lawns were dry. He unhooked the aerator, put it back in the basement and parked the tractor in the shed. The man filled his spreader halfway with ryegrass, then topped it with fescue and mixed the two thoroughly. He spread the seed over the yard and mixed the seed again when the spreader was empty. He did this until the bags of grass seed were empty. The man spread wheat straw over the bare spots, put the empty seed bags in the trashcan and the spreader back in the shed.
He went into the commons area pulled five packages of suet and an ear of dried corn out of the plastic container. He then picked up the container of birdseed and went outside. He walked to the front of the house and filled the two feeders that hung outside of his studio window. He then went onto the back deck and filled the big red feeder that hung outside of his wife’s office window. He walked into the yard, filled the two feeders that hung from a crook. The man then filled the small, white wooden feeder with two columns and a roof that was mounted on one of the big trees. The nuthatches loved this feeder and would scurry down the tree, grab some of the seed and scurry back up.
He filled the two metal feeders, both of which were mounted on metal poles and opened from a lid at the top. He put seed in the open gazebo feeder and then screwed the ear of corn onto the squirrel feeder, which was mounted on the other big tree. He placed the suet into the holders that were hanging from several hooks.
The man then filled the large Yankee Flipper feeder, which hung on a wooden stand that the man had built and placed in the middle of the yard. There was a See Rock City birdhouse mounted on the top of the stand. He only filled the feeder about halfway, which would be good for a week. The Yankee Flipper had a perch that spun when activated by the weight of a squirrel. One of the persistent little rodents would jump, grab onto the perch and spin before flying off. Some would hang on for dear life before being launched and landing on the ground below, where they would sit for several minutes in a daze. It was an expensive feeder but worth the price in sheer entertainment value alone.
He then climbed the steps onto the back porch and unhooked the nylon rope from the cleat mounted on the wall. The nylon rope was hooked to a hummingbird feeder and ran through a pulley mounted outside of the kitchen window. He lowered the feeder to the deck rail, filled it with sugar water, raised it back into position and secured the rope on the cleat. The hummers would only be around for a few more weeks before migrating, but for the time being they were still swarming and bickering around the feeder.
The man put the container of birdseed back in the commons area, went back outside, set the lawn sprinklers and turned them on. He looked at the sky. The cumulus clouds were gathering and their bottoms were turning gray. The rain would be coming that night or in the morning. That was why he had chosen that day to overseed the lawns. He felt very happy.
But like the rain, the darkness was coming. Once the rain had passed and the darkness lifted, the man would emerge from his shell and into the sunlight. He would remain there until the darkness descended once more and he retreated into his shell. It might be weeks, months or even a year before the darkness came. It always came, eventually. The darkness and the shell were always lurking.