An Incident

If you’ve read any of this stuff that I post you know it is a mixed bag. Some of it is silly thoughts or reactions to news events and some of it is personal.

Every couple or pair of partners has those secret moments that only they share. There is that certain wink or nod to each other that no one else knows about.

We all make references of incidents we can share. Maybe going to school at the same time or being in the same team or attending the same concerts are the shared references that draws us together. Look at the post on social networks and listen to any conversation and the message always turns to a television show or a movie celebrity or book or even a person that both can reference too. Yet the Internet drowns us in information and the mass media has fragmented our thoughts into a universe of manic confusion with a barrage of color and movement and sound and we sit idly by being consumed. Our references regurgitate what we have seen or heard or read or experience but only the two share the unique single incident.

We all celebrate our freedom to do so much with whomever we choose to spend time with. Some are public displays and some are private.

Here is a private incident.

For years my wife and I had different sleeping habits. I had a job that required me to be in my office/cubicle at a certain time so I had a few hours from my previous day to rest then prepare for my next day. She (upon my full approval) dropped out of the work force for various reasons and could rest anytime of the day or night. Sometimes she would be asleep when I came home. Sometimes she would be wide-awake when I needed rest. We tried all sorts of timetables. Some worked and some didn’t.

For a while she built a shelter upstairs to have private space while I attended the need for sleep. Other times she would take late night walks. Some of these walks were short, say around the local schoolyard a few blocks from home. She would tell me stories of cars slowing down as she walked by only to show them her cell phone and they drove off. Some were a little longer. Once she left in the middle of the night to trace the marathon path she intended to sign up for. When I woke up she was still not home but got the stories later of how the police car followed her downtown until she crossed the bridge to Southside. She was very independent and I could not lock her in so I grew us to her ventures.

A few times she would wake me to participate in her midnight adventures. Once she woke me to join her in observing an early morning meteor shower. Once she came home to tell me she had been shot with a policeman knocking on the door and saying he had checked her identity and she was deceased. Once she woke me and invited me out to play basketball.

I’m not sure that was the real reason but I was awoken in the middle of a deep sleep and asked to join her in a walk around the school. Being a good husband or still asleep, I dressed and locked the front door in the darkness.

This is where it gets weird. I don’t remember if we carried a basketball or found one on the courts in the school. I think we must have carried one. A few days or months earlier we had purchase a bunch of gym gear from Target in hopes of increasing our exercise/yogi routines. Like so many plans that go awry, the basketball and football and jump rope and skates and all the rest just gathered dust; until this night.

The school playground is fairly well lit by the streetlights and open to moonlight. The same asphalt I had played tetherball and four squares had two basketball hoops and is painted as a regulated playing surface. In previous walks around the school to share time for Buffy with Murry; we had observed groups of teens and twenties playing hoops but not in the middle of the night.

Without a car on the roads or a sound from the darken houses or the vacant classroom the two of us walked onto the black top and started shooting baskets. It was like a strange game of horse in the middle of the night. We talked as we put the ball up against the backboard and then passed it to each other. I’m not sure what we talked about. I don’t know if we solved problems or created bigger one. Just the two of us, not keeping any kind of score or in any hurry, bouncing a round brown ball and tossing it into a net.