writing prompt

A Perfect Breakfast

/ wvfurandroot / 2 Comments

Livia had been up for hours already.  She’d done a load of clothes, unloaded the dishwasher, and had been in the garden cutting daffodils to set in a vase on the kitchen table.  Looking out the window at the sunrise it occurred to her she should be hungry. 

Mornings without Greg were difficult and she was aware she filled them with activity to keep from thinking.  But the sunrise caught her attention and she allowed herself to remember.

Photo by Edgar Castrejon on Unsplash

Sunday.  Today was Sunday.  Greg would be in the kitchen separating eggs, slicing chives, and grating gruyere.  Opening the refrigerator to get the heavy cream, he would burst into song.  Probably an aria she wasn’t familiar with.  His love of opera confounded her. 

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The Great Beet Adventure of 1981

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Don’t even think about feeding me a beet.  It’s not going to happen. 

Tom Robbins is a favorite author of mine. Tom thought highly of beets.  Let me just quote him for a moment:

The beet is the most intense of vegetables. The radish, admittedly, is more feverish, but the fire of the radish is a cold fire, the fire of discontent not of passion. Tomatoes are lusty enough, yet there runs through tomatoes an undercurrent of frivolity. Beets are deadly serious.

Slavic peoples get their physical characteristics from potatoes, their smoldering inquietude from radishes, their seriousness from beets.

The beet is the melancholy vegetable, the one most willing to suffer. You can’t squeeze blood out of a turnip…

Jitterbug Perfume, Tom Robbins

Yes, Tom thought highly of beets. 

Photo by Monika Grabkowska on Unsplash

So did my father, I think.  Although I don’t remember ever seeing him eat a beet before that fateful summer.  He may have initially planted them for my mother who liked pickled beets.  Which are, arguably, the worst of all the beets.

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Road Trip!

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I did my first solo road trip in 1980 over Labor Day. I was 21.  I had a brand new 1980 Mustang, a few dollars, and was itching to drive.  My friends, who couldn’t go with me, were appalled.  Alone!  What about serial killers?  My parents didn’t blink an eye.  I grew up doing 3000-mile road trips.  Of course, I would want to take the car out and about. 

Photo by Sean Foster on Unsplash

I had a few dollars but not a lot of dollars.  I plotted the trip carefully.  Milwaukee to Huntington WV where I could stay with my best friend from high school.  

Oh, what a glorious drive it was. I was young. I was single.  I had a gleaming new car.  I had 8-tracks of my favorite music and I had no particular time I was expected to be anywhere.   

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Memento Mori, Tempus Fugit

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Alla Tsank https://statestreetdistrict.org/painting-list/alla-tsank

Her hair was a miracle, a wonder, a symphony of wild and beautiful.  You could get lost in hair like that. 

Let it wrap you in golden strands the color of wheat just before harvest like a blanket and a fire on a cold winter night.  Her hair was a mystery, an enigma, a talisman. 

Her hair beckoned you to magical forests, castles, charmed cottages.

Her hair.

I was in love with her immediately.  Entranced.  Intrigued. Infatuated.  I knew deep down it would not end well, but I hung around waiting for her to either find a table or leave.  I intended to follow her out the door if need be.  Determined to talk to her. 

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