A young waitress who had brought my breakfast and returned with ketchup for the home fries said she had seen ants like this outdoors, mostly on brick walls, but never inside.
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As she went off to other tables, I watched as the critter executed a patterned search over the blank part of a page in an 800-page novel I'd forked over a dollar for at Goodwill and, thanks to my senior discount, walked away with pocket change.
The search pattern brought to mind those small self-propelled vacuums named after a Latin dance - the ones that will clean the room if you flip a switch, shut the door and go out to visit your uncle and red-headed aunt. And that me wondering whether the pattern the ant follows is programmed into its DNA in a way like the vacuum’s is programmed into it.
Then I remembered it was Sunday.
On any other day, I probably would have brushed the ant off the page and read on, never giving it a second thought.
But Sundays are different.
And although the thoughts that come my way on Sundays may be particular to me, I’m convinced they’re products of the lighter moods and more open minds we’re all blessed with on this day of the week.
Or at least that comes to mind as Memorial Day arrives and the weather warms.
All that was on my mind as I left breakfast last Sunday on the road that runs behind Cedarville University and passed a formation of motorcyclist headed in the other direction not far from Clifton.
Yes, a low, semi-menacing rumble came and went with them; but the sound muffled what was going on. Their ride was just as much a Sunday treat as the syrup I Iicked off my fork I’d polished off the pancakes I only treat myself to a time or two in a month of Sundays.
Barbecues, family reunions, baseball, softball, picnics - all are part of it.
Of course, not everybody can just disappear into their Sundays every week. Last week, riding mowers logged more laps than Indy cars as grass ranchers all over the Midwest tried to catch up with the explosion of plant growth farmers wish they were seeing in their fields.
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Mark, my farmer friend at the breakfast place in Cedarville, told me he had a good deal of his corn in and there’s still some time to plant soybeans. But the rumbling trade war clouds and the running clock have made this May’s Sundays a little less carefree than they might have been.
Back in our yard, much of the planting is done, the bushes had flowered enough to be trimmed, and the chairs, fancy TV tray, hassock and rugs have made their migration out of the basement in exchange for the downward migration of beads of sweat from my brow.
Having said that, I’m compelled to mention the multiple washings of soaked sweatbands that have come off my wife’s forehead as she’s done hand-to-hand combat with dandelions and dug holes while I was out fetching supper, and hauled out the glass vase in which huge peony blooms float in the run up to Memorial Day.
We also are at a time of life when Sundays bring the greatest treat of all - visits from our grandsons. The visits have their regular features - our daughter catnapping on the couch; cookies and crackers shuttled from the cupboards to the top of the refrigerator as part of the crumb-snatcher relocation program; slight anxiety over whether the 2-year-old will engage in toddler gymnastics using the concrete steps as a mat; and the constant need to monitor screen time for the 6-year-old who two years ago began loading apps on my grandpa phone, which is so old it should have a crank on it besides me.
Of course, most of these things are problems I’d stand in line all day to be granted.
Knowing it won’t last forever, I’m happy that the older grandson still likes wrangling with me while he sits on my lap and seems amused when we argue over my claim of last Sunday that his first name is actually Schnicknerdorn.
During the senseless banter, my wife asks said grandson whether he doubts it, taking advantage an opportunity to praise him for being able to spell doubt complete with its silent b.
Knowing that I can’t stop the younger one from growing older by duct-taping a brick on his head, last Sunday I did have one more wish: That instead of speaking in understandable words in another month, his time of toddler talk can go on so I can savor the utter joy that comes to me when he completes a sentence I can’t understand, I ask him whether he’s sure about that and, while nodding definitively, he says “Yep!”
This Sunday is even more special, of course, because it launches the season in which the living is easy.
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