Mr. Peck’s bonus day
By CJ Black
Submitted to Corner Post
Aunt Lony was sitting in a rocking chair on her front porch with a day-old newspaper in her hands. Her sister, my grandmother, was in an identical rocker a few feet away perusing a newspaper she had read two days before. Aunt Lony didn’t subscribe to the paper, but my grandmother did. When my grandmother would visit, which was several times a week, she’d bring her newspapers to Aunt Lony.
I was sitting with my back to a post on the porch so I could look out on the road and side yard and listen in on the conversation between the rockers at the same time. It wasn’t eavesdropping. They often spoke of things directly related to me and relatives I knew. Sometimes I was called on to provide updates on my life or that of my brothers and sisters. And if I happened to pick up a bit of gossip that was not intended for my ears to hear, I considered that compensation for the times I listened to dialogue that held not the slightest interest to me.
“The A&P has a bonus pack of laundry soap this week,” my grandmother announced. Aunt Lony looked over but said nothing. “They’re giving a free package of a new product with bleach crystals for folks to try,” my grandmother explained. A few more moments of silence, then Aunt Lony said, “That reminds me of Mr. Peck.” I turned my gaze from the squirrels chasing each other around the fat trunk of the big oak in the side yard, curious about the connection between laundry soap with bleach crystals and an old man I’d heard about but had never met.
Giving her rocker a thrust backward Aunt Lony said, “Many’s a time I’ve heard people pray, ‘Thank you for this day, Lord.’ or ‘Isn’t it a pretty day.’ But Mr. Peck would say, ‘Thank you for this bonus day.’ or ‘It sure is a pretty bonus day.’ The reason, as I understand it, is that if a person was to come to the end of his life and could have an opportunity for one more day — a bonus day — he would like that, don’t you think? A day to try to make things right where you’ve done some wrong; to express things you wish you would’ve expressed, or to appreciate things more?”
“I heard that Mr. Peck had a dream one night and in his dream a man told him his time was up. But then the man in the dream told Peck, ‘Here is a bonus day. Take it.’ With that, Mr. Peck said he woke up and realized it was dawn, and he was in his bed with his wife beside him, just as thousands of days before. But this time he felt an odd sense that this was somehow a special day. A gift. A bonus day.”
Aunt Lony looked down at me and continued, “His wife told me that he rolled from his bed onto his knees and said aloud, ‘Thank you for this bonus day.’ And he repeated that simple prayer of thanksgiving every day after, up through the day he died last year.”
“Almost six years from when he had that dream, wasn’t it?” my grandmother asked. My aunt nodded and turned her attention back to the newspaper.
Another simple life lesson at the feet of my relatives — the importance of making the minutes at hand count in a positive way and the importance of gratitude.
