Joyce made me the same breakfast before every hard day. Two eggs over hard, toast corner to corner, coffee she’d sugared without asking. Union exams, the layoff year, the morning we buried my brother. Forty-nine years; she never asked if I wanted it, and I never said what it meant. That generation of me didn’t say things. Joyce passed two Marches ago. Thursday they’re doing my cataracts, and I woke at five-thirty out of habit and sat in the dark house. At quarter after six, earlier than the birds, headlights swung in. My granddaughter Heather let herself in with her key, didn’t say morning, set the skillet going, and the smell of it had me gripping the counter. Two eggs over hard. Toast corner to corner. She sugared the coffee, set it down, and said Grandma made her promise, years back, that whenever I had a hard day coming……

The smell of the kitchen always hits me first. It is that sharp, bitter scent of coffee and the heavy, fatty heat of a cast iron skillet. I sat there in the …

Joyce made me the same breakfast before every hard day. Two eggs over hard, toast corner to corner, coffee she’d sugared without asking. Union exams, the layoff year, the morning we buried my brother. Forty-nine years; she never asked if I wanted it, and I never said what it meant. That generation of me didn’t say things. Joyce passed two Marches ago. Thursday they’re doing my cataracts, and I woke at five-thirty out of habit and sat in the dark house. At quarter after six, earlier than the birds, headlights swung in. My granddaughter Heather let herself in with her key, didn’t say morning, set the skillet going, and the smell of it had me gripping the counter. Two eggs over hard. Toast corner to corner. She sugared the coffee, set it down, and said Grandma made her promise, years back, that whenever I had a hard day coming…… Read More