Without prior notification all the cells of my body start jumping around at once and I cannot help but burst out laughing. All the stuff in my mouth is falling on the floor. My daughter is just staring at me first; she doesn’t understand how I became so overjoyed all of a sudden, but she promptly joins me in laughter. The staircase amplifies our voices in rolling waves, Mr. Mozart keeps on playing and I soon feel my abs like I haven’t felt in a long time.
It’s Granma, I’m telling my daughter, and I put her carefully on the ground, like a potted plant, so she doesn’t tumble. I wait ‘till she grabs the handrail, then I wipe a fat teardrop from my eye and pick up the phone.
“Hi Mom, I’m so happy you called!” I tell her wholeheartedly and again some of those jumpy cells in my body give me a final chuckle.
Perhaps my mom cannot really make sense of my unusual joyfulness. She’s hesitantly silent, and in these few moments, I’m convinced that whoever is making sure the universe is okay is doing a damn fine job sometimes after all.
“I just called to remind you to say happy birthday to your father.”
And now I’m the one who’s lost for words. I take a look at my daughter; she’s already fiddling with the handrail. She’s intensely examining the crackled blue color painting of the iron. She’s immensely occupied. I crouch right next to her, and I stroke a tuft of hair out of her face.
“Son, are you still there?” I hear the woman that gave me birth and raised me asking from the other end of the line.
“I know” I heave out quickly “It’s the second. I swear I won’t forget it this year.”
My daughter starts to scratch the paint.
“Today is the second.”
I am proud that I can fit everything work-related precisely into an imaginary calendar. I can create an optimal schedule, and I can stay on it. It’s unbelievable that I’m unable to do the same with my private stuff. I often feel that in my personal life my brain rejects the notion of the dimension called time. The fancy, colorful timeline composed of known dates does not fit on the plane of any actual calendar.