We as a family were not adept at early rising. Except for Dad who quietly folded himself into each new day; rising sometimes at 5 and on other days at 5:30…as the spirit led and as the need for strong, black boiled coffee surfaced.
Numerous times during those early days of elementary school, the rumbling bumbling yellow school bus headed up Seymour Street and we made quick decisions about clothing and breakfast. We needed both. Mom solved the problem.
We waited quietly and slightly stunned on the neighbor’s stoop, clothed and holding mugs of steaming hot chocolate and slices of warm buttered cinnamon toast. Our instructions were clear. We were to leave mugs and toast scraps on the stoop when finished. We were to get on the bus. Admit nothing. Don’t tell any family secrets.
When the bus was long gone, stinking diesel fumes fading into the cold as the vehicle lumbered down the hill and around the bend by the house with the stone wall, Mom slunked across the cold street in her house robe quickly retrieving the dishes and food remnants off the stoop.
We made yearly trips out to South Dakota, in the blast furnace of July long before air conditioning was standard in cars. The temperatures soared by mid morning to over 100 degrees. Our instructions were clear. ‘Beat the heat’. This admonition meant rising at 4am or so to hit the road, bringing us smack dab back around to our problem that we by nature were not early risers. Except for Dad who quietly folded himself out of the hotel door and into the early morning black ink to pack the car and search for old coffee in a cold thermos.
Mom solved the problem. Our duty was made clear. ‘Don’t think. Move’. 4am is not happening when one refuses to react and respond. Awful. Yet some of childhood’s sweetest memories are wrapped in mornings when the blazing sun rose over the prairie line, shimmering to boiling in the sweet early air; the earth smelling of purple flax and cold well water and black soil and angus cattle. A hundred miles in any direction was empty dawn coolness rising to heat along with the solitude and the promise of French toast at the next greasy truck stop and a highway ribbon slicing through a thousand years of quiet buffalo. On this Mother’s Day weekend…here’s to you Mom…
690 Saint Paul 