Eight

I left my window open with the shade up purposely wanting to rise as soon as the day began. I expected the sun to wake me, and while it was the light that eventually persuaded my eyes to open, it was the birds that grabbed my consciousness first.

Sometime before seven I heard the carol of birds mixing with the breeze. I know that the birds were in my mind because I dreamt that I was living in a giant birdhouse. Created from dirt, straw, shredded newspaper and string, the house was designed after the desert home of Frank Lloyd Wright. I felt comfortable in that home, if for no other reason that it was created through God.

I lay in bed and felt my body surrounded by the waking world. That morning we came to life together. We were mixing into each other like a river flowing into the sea, fresh and salty waters diluting into one another. When the sun began to shine across my face, I opened my eyes. The strange glow of its rays moved across the room lighting the walls though it was still too early to give warmth.

I woke slowly, like a flower opening, and then ran to the window to look out on my day. The sun broke like a crystal glass falling onto a hard wood floor; shards of light spilled out everywhere leaving the sky to mop them up. My body filled with the excitement of an eight-year-old girl. Today was my birthday. I was no longer seven; I was eight.

Mom was the first person up in the house. I ran down the stairs and found her fixing breakfast in the kitchen. The crisp scent of frying bacon filled the room. I immediately hit her with every question that my new, sharper, eight-year-old head could think of beginning with, “Mom did you get a cake?”

“Of course,” she answered. Mom next used a spoon to pop open a container of biscuits. I watched her arrange them in the same positions as the numbers of a clock in a cake pan and then stick the pan in the oven.

“Chocolate?” I asked.

Mom opened the refrigerator door and peered inside. She pulled out a few eggs. She didn’t even look at me but I could see a smile on her face. “Yes,” she answered as she cracked the eggs into a bowl and whipped them together with some milk.

“Frosting?”

“Of course,” Mom poured the stringy, yellow mixture into a pan.

“Ice cream?” I asked as I watched her cross the room and retrieve a few plates from the cabinets that hung over a counter.

“Yes,” she brought the plates over and placed one in front of me. “Grab a seat, Mary and we’ll enjoy breakfast together. Just the two of us.”

“Milk?”

“One whole gallon.” Mom placed two strips of bacon on a plate and a scoop of scrambled eggs.

“What time is everybody coming around?”

“Three O’clock,” she answered. Mom poured a tall glass of orange juice and then took up a seat next to me. Jesus and Little Mary would not awake for another few hours. The morning was ours.