Breakfast

As I set the cup on the table where you were seated (and you said ‘what a treat’ as if this isn’t something you’re used to, which perplexes me) I remembered the first time I made your tea. Earl Gray it was. Steeped until strong, taken with milk. You came into the kitchen, just out of the shower, your t-shirt clinging to the dampness of one spot on your back. That place that’s always hard to reach. Your feet bare. It was all so natural, like we’d lived this moment a thousand times before, and it made me smile.

I thought I saw a flicker of surprise flash across your face, which I took as you wondering how I knew how you like your tea. But of course, I knew. Remember the time with the chocolates? (Did I ever tell you that my first instinct had been to send savory somethings, not sweet?) How you thought they must be from me but couldn’t be, because they were everything you love, but I had no way of knowing that. Nor did I know that I’d chosen the exact moment in time you needed to be reminded that you matter. So, of course, I knew, how you like your tea.

Breakfast… None of this is what I’m really writing about, but also it is. A reminder of a time when what the meaning of us is, was no more known than it is now, (apart from when it is, which really is always if we let it be) but there was no distance, even when there was. It was also a time when words flowed effortlessly, until they didn’t and I’ve never told you why (I think) they stopped and how much I have wanted them to come back to act as the valve which allows me to release some of the pressure, every now and then. The book is still ‘there.’ You know, the one that you told me you saw me writing because you knew things you had no reason to know, too.

Breakfast…. ‘you were always brilliant, in the morning, smoking your cigarette, and talking, over coffee’ that’s not me (or you, except you are always brilliant) that’s Jewel. But you probably know that. We talked about her. Not over breakfast, over the phone. I was rambling on about a concert long ago, all the amazing female artists, and the angry people throwing ice cubes at me and my daughters (my daughters and me?) (who were so little then) because we, along with most of the crowd, were standing to watch. You asked me if I was talking about Lilith Fair, and I loved that you knew that. That we were at the same event, but also not at all at the same event.

Breakfast… I’m not sure if it’s synchronistic that it’s the anniversary of the death of Chris Cornell (this time it’s one of us, you’d said then, when we’d found out) which means that one month from now it’s the anniversary of the death of Chester and his first band is playing in London tonight and I’m not there to see them which is OK because I’m not even certain how I feel about the whole thing, but, I’m writing tonight after a very long time of not, and I think there’s something to that too, but I actually don’t know, much of anything, really, just now.

Breakfast… I’ll get there… like the grit in the shell, waiting patiently to become the pearl… I’ll get there. This unintentional (in parts) retrospective is pushing through everything else and maybe that’s about Chris, and Chester or the randomness of my muse or none of those things and probably the why doesn’t matter, (it is what it is.)

Breakfast… I still like American bacon better. But I’ve grown accustomed to (your face) instant coffee and not having the the creamer, which has not one ingredient known to nature in it, so I’m better off without. I wish there had been more. More food. More time. (Less interruptions!) Did I remember to thank you? For your gentle guidance in helping me to work through, well, everything? Almost none of the conversation (my end) was what I’d intended it to be because, life on pause, while moving forward, so what I thought I decided about everything became undecided all over again, but it was more than I let on.

Breakfast… Isn’t, and is, a Song for Johnny continued (which isn’t a song and there’s no one named Johnny) and an expression of an amalgamation of memories, emotions and thoughts, and is a truth story not true story, but in the time from then (when Song for Johnny wrote itself) until now, there have been innumerable tears, and laughter, new life and new lives, lives nearly lost and lives lost. There have been more words but fewer words, doors closed, half opened, opened then closed, skinned knees (so many skinned knees) and butterfly wings. Eloquent, it is not.

Breakfast… Eggs and bacon and sourdough bread. But really…

Breakfast… Was giving, through receiving. Do you see? Eaters and feeders we both are  (if you, accidental reader who stumbles across this, thinks this is about sex, it is not) and in the days that have become months when feeding has not been allowed it has been (for me) the shutting down of a part of the very essence of me. So thank you. For giving me the gift of receiving.

Breakfast… You said there’s plenty of time.  But is there?