Sometimes I feel like I just go along and go along so. My day-to-days are often the same: Waking up from a dream, helping my old dog down the stairs, taking her for an ever-slower run in the ice and the snow, and the thawing spring puddles, and the suffocating heat, and the welcome sweet-smoked cooling winds, and the ice and the snow, drinking tea and thinking-not-thinking, and working and worrying and writing-not-writing and walking the dog and drinking wine and making dinner and worrying a little less and falling back into a dream and waking up from a dream and helping my old dog down the stairs. I live at a walking pace, but I love walking.

The word “routine” comes from the same root as road or pathway, and I love a pathway. I don’t find it boring to walk on the same pathway every day. There’s always something new to notice. I am never bored. It is a tenet (which is from tenir, to hold, but saying o’er what I have said before). If your pathway has trees, which mine does, you see the changing of the times of day and seasons of the year in the leaves and the bark and the branches. You hear the small birds there. If your pathway is along water, which mine is, you see life in the glowing murky depths or hear the ice cracking in the winter and worry about the life in the murky depths. You meet people and dogs along the pathway. You can rest in a lay-by when it all gets to be too much. You can follow a path that branches from your path, and see where it leads. Some days, of course I am derailed from my route, for reasons immeasurable. Deaths, celebrations, unavoidable mundane appointments and plans. It’s a strange undercurrent of frantic, the change, and the thought that the change is so strange to me. And sometimes the change is as simple and devastating as a spring morning. When you reach a certain age there’s no time of year or song or scent that doesn’t press its soft fingers on some tender bruise.

April is the cruellest month, breeding lilacs out of the dead land, mixing memory and desire, stirring dull roots with spring rain. Winter kept us warm, covering earth in forgetful snow. I’m not sure I’m ready to be awakened, and this year more than most. This year more than most. I’m not a person who doesn’t notice the changing light in the jewel-greening winter-springing trees, the incoming and departing birds, the returning rabbit, the surprising waves of warmth. I’m not a person who isn’t grateful for all of that. I’m not a person who isn’t moved by the changing of the season. I am not not undone by spring. I am scared, though. Of time passing, of everyone I love (and myself, too) growing older. I am scared to the point I almost can’t think about it. So I go along. Go along so.

To keep with the etymological, quotidien has its roots in the question “how many days?” Thankfully (I think thankfully), this is a question none of us can answer. For how many days will we be allowed and able to walk along this path? This is a thing I think about — we never know the last time. And this is especially soft dusk-blue-sledgehammer-hitting with things we do every day, things we do every week, things we take for granted. We didn’t know the last time we would feel our children’s arms snake around our neck when they asked to be picked up with their strange perfect weight and warmth, we didn’t know the last time our dog would be fit enough to run through fields in the morning with a joy that was worth waking up for, we didn’t know the last time we would make the long drive to someone’s home to get Chinese takeout and drink the cheap wine we brought. We don’t know the last time. We can never know the last time. So we don’t wish time away. This is another tenet of my philosophy. We don’t wish time away, even in a waiting room or the last hour of our work or stuck in traffic or having our teeth cleaned. We don’t wish time away. How many days, how many hours? We can’t know.

Because (this is another thing I think about a lot) to live a mundane, quotidian, routine life is a privilege that not everyone enjoys. It should be, but, sadly, it isn’t. Boredom is the ultimate privilege. Throughout the history of this country, and sadly again today, people could be harassed or hurt, imprisoned or deported for the simple act of walking to a job, taking their kids to school, eating at a certain restaurant, or shopping for food at a certain store, just because of the way they looked or where they were from or who they loved. And this is to say nothing of people we have displaced by war and violence. It’s a different sort of fight just for the right to live an ordinary life, the small rituals of life we might struggle with every day, without thinking. I know this is not what she meant, but it takes such courage to be prepared for the long littleness of life. Such awareness, such an effort, such a recognition of the joy and warmth of it. Such a recognition of the gift of the littleness of life. Such an appreciation that we can just go along. Go along, so. Go along.