It's early morning. The house is still asleep and I can hear the deep breathing coming from Laurie and Mary Beth's beds.
A tiny sliver of light is sneaking underneath our bedroom door and the smell of fresh made coffee is filling the air I breath in.
No need for an alarm clock in our house. The aroma is enough to get me alert. I climb down the side of the bunk bed and wander into the kitchen.
Sitting at the table is my dad enjoying a cup of coffee and reading the morning paper. I grab a cup out of the cabinet and fill it with the rich warm liquid, followed by enough sugar to kill the taste and make it into more of a syrup than a hot beverage. I follow this with some milk and mix it until the color changes from a dark brown to more of a light tan.
"You know, that's going to stunt your growth," my dad says as I put the cup on the table and sit next to him.
"Too late," I reply.
These are the best mornings of my life. Just me, my dad, and a hot coffee. Truth is, I really didn't like coffee all that much at the age of 14, but it was the only time that things were quiet enough that I could have him all to myself.
By this point, seven of the kids had moved out of the house leaving just me, Mike, Laurie, Chris and Mary Beth. Almost a normal sized family. My dad was more relaxed in the morning and we could have the chance to be together.
I looked up at the kitchen clock. it was almost 4 o'clock. My dad would be headed to work soon, and I would be packing my bags and heading out on my bike for school. In those days we lived in our second house in Oak Creek. Chapel Hills Subdivision off of Rawson and Pennsylvania. I would ride about 1/2 mile to Laura's house, where she would join me as we pedaled to pick up Kim and Beth before going to do a morning work out for swim team. Laura and I were Sophomore, Kim and Beth were a year behind.
"So, how's the memorizing going?" my dad asked as I reviewed my notes for a test I was having in English.
"Not so hot, Shakespeare is hard to come up with anagrams for memorizing."
I really didn't have a great reading comprehension so most of my tests were passed with the famous "learn and purge" method. In other words, I would memorize facts or come up with clever hints to remember important dates, and then as soon as the test was over I would forget everything to make room for other important stuff, like television trivia. My hints or anagrams were sort of like "in 1492 Columbus sailed the ocean blue" but not that lame. Another trick I had was to rewrite my notes smaller and smaller and smaller, my dad would watch me copy them out over and over gain, actually making crib notes, but never needing them since I had written it so many times that I ended up memorizing the information.
"What are you up to today?" I asked.
I'm sure he gave me some 'dad' reply and continued on. To be honest the conversation wasn't the important part. It was just having time alone with my dad before the day got crazy.
I was quite the over achiever, when it came to things I could cram into a day. I would start, as I said, with coffee, then a workout, then to the cafeteria in the school to help setup breakfast/snack sales. School, lunch hour work in the cafeteria, after school swim practice, work either as a life guard or at Kentucky Fried Chicken, home, bed, repeat.
Homework? Oh yeah, somewhere in there I did my homework. To be honest, other than keeping the teachers from flunking me, homework was not all that important. I wasn't going to college so grades didn't matter, this was probably the one time I wasn't competitive. I really didn't care what grades the other kids got, if I got a 'C', I was golden.
Breakfast would be over too fast and we would soon go about packing up and heading out. But not before giving my dad a hug and telling him to have a good day. He would return the gesture and we would wave as we went our separate ways.
To this day, the smell of coffee in the morning brings me back to the mornings with my dad. Every now and then I get to sit, quietly and watch the sun rise. I lift my coffee (now I like it black) and deeply inhale the aroma. Closing my eyes I remember those mornings and I can almost hear my dad's keys rattle as he puts them on his belt before heading out.
*raising my cup* "To simpler times!
Have a good day everyone!"
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