i am looking for posts i’ve written in the past to celebrate the birthday of my mate, my wife. Undoubtedly, i will post at least one on her birthday Monday.

i often wonder just how we ended up together and how she not only has put up with a really strange guy, but how she still loves me in spite of my shenanigans (a perfect word for me and my history: the second definition of the noun states, “silly or high-spirited behavior; mischief.”)

Then in today’s early, early hours of the morning, even earlier than usual, i awoke, and this thought came into my head: “as different as day and night.” That was it. Nothing more.

i tried to sleep. i wanted to get a couple of more hours before rising my Friday morning early for my Friday Morning Golf, more of a ritual now than when it first began with Marty Linville in 1991. i could not. i had gone to bed early. i cannot sleep much more than six hours with an old man party break…huh, that’s “potty break,” not “party break.” i moved out of our bedroom and lay down on the guest bedroom bed. Didn’t work. i arose, dressed for golf, and fed the cats. As i placed the cats’ dishes in their feeding places, the newspaper boy…er, no longer accurate: man in a car, pulled into our driveway since there are very few people who get the printed newspaper anymore, if at all, and tossed our paper on the driveway before backing out and continuing on his rounds. i walked out to get the paper. Standing there in the dark, well before first light, i realized the fog was setting in, the Santa Ana had broken. The half moon was hazy. The morning star hanging over Mexico could not be seen, nor Mount Miguel to the east.

i thought, “Night and day are about to mingle. First light will be more of a melding than a division.

“Like us.”

Monday, Maureen will be the youngest 71 i’ve ever known. i mean she ain’t no spring chicken, but she handles it well. She is beautiful and more, oh so much more importantly, she cares about every one, even the rapscallion she married.

Standing there in the seacoast town pre-dawn fog, i thought again, “Night and Day.”

i made the coffee, performed the now required stretches for the morning round and sat down and wrote the first cut of this:

Night and Day

the two of them
are as different as
night and day,
but
if you’ve noticed,
night and day go together very well
and
even if these two are different,
they match perfectly:
she is forever beautiful;
he’s a jolly old elf;
she is careful, planning, specific;
he is bumbling, taking off on whims;
yet,
they understand each other
and
anticipate each other’s needs and wants;

it’s beautiful,
like when
the morning star shines down
on first light
and
night meets day;
the question remains
who is night
and who is day?