At our old home I’d wake every morning at 6, maybe even 6:30, to tiptoe down the stairs and make a coffee. I would stretch my achey limbs in the kitchen, while the cats mewled around me for their breakfast (too early), as the Nespresso machine hummed, and silently pray that neither child of mine would wake, because if they did, then this special event — Morning Time for Mothers™ — would be all over. Advancing up the stairs with a foaming coffee in hand, back to bed, still warm, there was a always a candle to my right, on the bedside table — think Oakmoss, think Dirty Hinoki, think Woody Sage — and a steadfast box of matches inside of the drawer. The coffee and candle was church for me, you see. I’d sit in bed for an hour or more, writing sometimes, reading other times, or perhaps researching Silkhenge, the spider’s web shaped like Stonehenge that mystified a male researcher until he discovered that, oh, yes, this elusive web fortress was built for babies. Obviously.
I am getting slightly off topic here. The main thing is that during this hour, nobody bothered me and the morning was my own. I knew my way, and time seemed to part for it.
At our new home, I wake at 2, and then at 3, and then at 4. Our new bedroom is a wood panelled room that feels like sleeping inside of the bow of an old ship. It creaks and swells. I make a pact with myself to not get out of bed until 4:30, because it seems a decent, reasonable hour in terms of it being “morning” (though, an unwise choice when 8pm rolls around later that evening). Heidi, my husband’s English Springer Spaniel, wants something but does not know what, so she whines at the foot of the bed. My husband does not wake. When he sleeps, he has Father Ears, not Mother Ears. If you are a mother, you will know what I mean.
I stand over Heidi and whisper to her, you are not going outside yet. She tilts her head to the left, looking up at me with her doe-eyes, jaw stretched into a canine-smile. She knows that I am lying. I make a coffee, and think about the candle. In this house, the Nespresso machine sounds VERY LOUD. I forget where I’ve put the box of matches, and because this is still a new home, I open many drawers looking for a lighter. I get to the silverware drawer — at least, it should be a silverware drawer, but there is also a roll of tape? And one battery? — I notice that someone has left a carton of berries out overnight on the counter. I find a rolling, blushed-pink stain soaked into the wood countertop beneath it that looks like the shape of a cartoon cloud. Something on the tile floor crunches underfoot, and I lift my leg to find that it is a solitary cracker. Heidi, come, I whisper. Heidi eats the remains of the cracker from the bottom of my foot. I am pleased with this. It is time to let the dog out.
A cardboard box obstructs our pathway to the back door. When I lunge over it (without any moaning, groaning or noise, I might add, a skill developed over many practiced sessions of Morning Time for Mothers™), my robe catches on the upright handle of the vacuum cleaner, the location of which is a GREAT SURPRISE TO ME. I disorient myself and fall backward into the door.
This is an event that Heidi has watched unfold from start to finish, but has no expression of sympathy for. She bounds right past me, anyway: out into the green expanse of our new yard, that early morning birdsong, the damp ground smell. The air smells full and wet, perfumed with the best parts of early July. She has found her way. I do not blame her.
Inside, my robe has been shrugged off, still half-wrapped around the vacuum cleaner handle. The cats find that I am awake, and mewl for their breakfast. I give it to them, because I am soft now. Because it is still only 4:36 am, and my boundaries are spider-web-thin, more silk than stone.
As a creature of habit — and also, I might add, a textbook Libra — balance and routine grounds me. I haven’t found my way yet in this house and new community just yet, but I know that I will, and that time will part for it once again, like it did before so naturally. In a while, I will figure out where the tahini is in the grocery store, and remember that the farmer’s market is on Fridays, not on Saturdays.
For now, I have learned that a candle and coffee is quite nice in the living room. In this room, amber shadows dance off the tall ceiling, and if it’s raining, I can open a window to listen. After her morning run though the yard, Heidi settles on the rug at my feet. One or more cats come to make themselves warm on my lap.
I have found that time is beginning to edge a little already, just enough for me to write this, to you.
Writing Prompt: Finding Your Way
Write about someone (a character, or yourself, or maybe even a spider) finding their way in a new place, with a new person, or in a new time. What transpires on their journey, and how do they travel there? Which roadblocks —cardboard, or otherwise — are in their way? Perhaps you’ll write about the acceptance of the fresh journey with excitement, or about the resistance and fear in charting into unknown territory. Whatever your choice, make it curious.
New Nonfiction Essay in Event 53/1!
I wanted to share that my essay “Hungry Daughter” won second place in the Event Magazine 2023 Nonfiction Contest and has now found a home in print, inside the pages of the latest issue.
You can purchase the issue online — it’s only $13 and is filled with the other two winning nonfiction essays, plus some more excellent stories and poems. If you like reading and/or writing, it’s so nice to support Canadian literary magazines if you can afford it. They uplift emerging writers in unquantifiable ways.
Thanks for reading,
xx Britt
The farmers market here is this Saturday. Miss you 🥹