The Laughing Maus

“When you travel you see a lot of this in the faces of middle-aged people in restaurants, people my age—at the end of middle age and the beginning of old age. You see this, or you feel it like a snail, this sort of chuckling along looking at the sights. It’s a feeling that the capacity for responding to things is being shut off in some way. I feel now that this is a possibility. I feel it like the possibility that you might get arthritis, so you exercise so you won’t. Now I am more conscious of the possibility that everything could be lost, that you could lose what had filled your life before.”

Alice Munro @ The Paris Review

Jana knows five different ways to start the day. On Mondays she literally jumps out of bed, it is the only way to keep herself from burrowing underneath the flowered duvet and scratching the whole week. On Tuesdays she drinks tea and she rewards her healthy intentions by plugging in the tea pot and creeping back under her covers for five minutes. Occasionally, on Tuesday she goes to the shower instead of back to bed but she always takes too long and has to heat her tea water again then she feels bad for wasting electricity. Wednesdays she seldom goes to bed before three o’clock in the morning, but she doesn’t have to work until late in the afternoon so it’s ok. Wednesdays she simply doesn’t acknowledge mornings.

Thursdays she doesn’t acknowledge evenings going to bed early and getting up at oh-dark-thirty and watch for the bus. Her handsome neighbor gets off the bus very early on Thursday mornings disappearing into his house not to be seen again until next week. Every week she considers going outside to wait – as if to get on the bus – just to see if she would have the courage to speak to him. She doesn’t actually do this though because she can’t figure out how to explain that she doesn’t care if she misses the bus (in case he speaks to her) and she has no idea where she would go if she must get on the bus. She thinks it’s a nice dream and next week she will be pluckier. On Fridays she rolls out of bed and sits on the floor. Fridays she cries her way out of bed. How can she not hate Friday mornings? They are always the same.

Thanks to Sarah Salway for today’s writing prompt.