Resolution

I had a feeling that Michigan was going to go down to Nebraska in the Alamo Bowl, and looking at the clock, realized the unhappy event would not be until well after eleven. My boys did not appear to have the resolution to win the contest. I was surprised to find that I was not up for another late game this week, regardless of the emotion.

I felt almost giddy as I turned off the television and walked back to the master bedroom to put myself in the jug for safe keeping. I reclined in the cool dark sanctuary of the silk duvet in the bed in the back room.

So many great seasons, and so many disappointments on New Year’s Day. I hoped that in 2006 I not care so much about things that do not matter.

I turned on the snooze-timer on the radio next to the bed. I think the program was talking about the great tidal wave a year ago, and I burrowed deep into the covers and it murmured in the background. Tsunamis and hurricanes, and I finally have a queen-size bed with a pillow-top mattress that does not fold into the wall.

I rose to the beeping of the cell phone in the kitchen where it was charging. It was faint, but insistent in the silence of the thick concrete walls. I padded down hall past the spare bedroom, pausing only to open and close the door. It is a real novelty.

When I arrived at the kitchen, I peered at the phone. I am always young when I waken, and never remember that I wear glasses. I was hoping that the message was a congratulatory one from my son, but it was not. My stomach growled with anticipation. I walked silently back into the darkened living room and looked at the blank screen over the computer. I felt queasy about opening up the email. I had to know, and didn’t want to.

The first e-mail in the queue originated from a Cornhusker fan of my acquaintance in Japan . I contemplated something creative I could do to him with a corn-cob, but decided to put away the thoughts of vengeance for the next season, with the dream of the National Championship that all fools have before the first kick-off.

We normally do win, almost like a force of nature, that is what makes it so hard. There were some astonishing acts of hubris this year. Michigan State players went wild when they beat the Irish down in South Bend , and stormed the field when it was done to plant an MSU flag at the fifty-yard line at Notre Dame Stadium. A couple games later, the hapless Minnesota Golden Gophers beat Michigan at home, in the Big House, and they did the same thing. Planting their flag and bellowing their triumph.

They have artificial turf in the Big House, so I am not sure it stood up very well.

But they are going to pay for that next year. I hate to lose to anyone. The Irish and the Buckeyes are particularly bad in that regard. But losing to the Gophers was another novelty. We hadn’t turned the Little Brown Jug over to them in years not since the disastrous 1986 season, and that was the only time we had lost since I went away to school in Ann Arbor , thirty-six seasons ago.

7-5 is the way our season went, and that is the end of that for this year. I think they ought to ride Coach Carr out of town in a polite ceremony and drop him by Interstate-94. Now all that is left in my emotional locker is the Redskins stumble toward the NFL Eastern Division championship. They will somehow find a way to elate and then crush my spirit. Unfortunately, that goes for everyone who live in what we like to call the Capital of the Free World.

So beware, those of you I the great Heartland. Stand by for bad legislation and worse policy after the Skins head for the exit. Perhaps the headquarters of a global Superpower should not be permitted to have its own football team.

Depressed, I looked in the icebox for a likely candidate for breakfast. There were jugs and containers of organic matter that appeared to be changing states. It had been perfectly good when I put it there a month ago.

I sighed, and made a resolution to come to terms with it. I like the shopping as much as I like the cooking, and I like both better than the eating. When I could see all the way to the back of the refrigerator, I ran the harvest down to the trash chute in two trips, sorting the re-cycling stuff and trying not to make too much noise. It was still just after five, and most of the good residents of Big Pink are still asleep, not a care in the world except for global warming and the depletion of the oil reserves and the end of civilization as we know it.

I gathered the laundry together and listened passively to the BBC. Dan Damon, the host of World Update, is away from his desk in the Middle East . He is Israel again this morning, and did the press round-up near the top of the hour, and then popped up as a correspondent in the NPR news show that follows the World Update from Bush House in London .

Someone had blown themselves up again at a check point, and violated the uneasy truce that followed the Israeli evacuation of the settlements. It seemed to be back to the tit-for-tat cycle of violence. It seemed that we were back precisely to where we had been before Yassir Arafat’s cold dead hands were pried from the throat of the Palestinian people.

I carried the laundry that belonged to the lower Big Pink unit down the stair-well, knees creaking. I walked outside to the door on the patio and opened it up in the darkness. It was raining. I thought I should go to the real office downtown, and maybe I will, later. I began the slow ritual of morning. I turned on the scanner and the computer, thinking of the great works I might compose, and filling the coffee pot, disposing of the old grounds and the discolored filter and grinding beans for the next batch.

I looked at the refrigerator and realized there was even older stuff inside. I looked at some of the salad dressing and saw one bottle that said �best served by March, 2002.�

The butter was much newer. I threw a pat of it in the cast iron skillet and started it to gently melt in preparation for cooking the eggs. I am resolving a lot of things for the New Year. I’m glad there are still a few days before it begins.

Copyright 2005 Vic Socotra

www.vicsocotra.com

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