mornings – Persistence and Pedagogy

Mornings in our house are a tightly choreographed dance of who is doing what where when: Andre is in the kitchen and I am upstairs; Andre is upstairs and I am in the kitchen; Andre is making breakfast and I am waking the kids; the kids are eating breakfast and I am finishing getting dressed. On it goes, each of us weaving around the others, chatting, moving and generally getting ready. By 8:15, everyone is out of the house.

Except for last Thursday. Last Thursday we thought everything was going along smoothly: Andre had run out to the bakery for our breakfast; I had woken the children and then finished getting ready; Mr. 14 was putting his lunch together in the kitchen while Andre dressed upstairs. I left first, and Mr. 14 followed me. Andre was putting on his shoes, about to head out the door, when he noticed a backpack in the corner of the front room.

A backpack? But the kids had already gone to school.

Except that we had forgotten about Mr. 12. He had stayed up LONG after his bedtime finishing a book (Skander and the Unicorn Thief – he highly recommends it and is already desperate for the sequel which has not yet been released) so when I woke him up, he said hello, sat up, then laid back down, turned over and went back to sleep. In the morning chaos (ahem, choreography) no one noticed a missing 12-year-old. Oops.

Andre slipped his shoes off, woke up the kid, made him some lunch, thrust a bun at him for breakfast and got him out of the house so quickly that Mr. 12 wasn’t even late for school and Andre wasn’t late for work.

We have tried to foist this oversight off on the child, telling him firmly that he cannot read until all hours of the night on a school night, but he knows the truth: we totally forgot about him.

7:47am I should be getting ready for work. Correction: I should be ready for work. I should have done some yoga this morning. I should definitely have checked that Mr. 11 wore boots when he left for school. But it’s cold and I’m tired and the semester is coming to an end and my tea is warm and…

A sudden blur of brown and white flashes outside our sliding glass door. Our cat, Tippy, rises from her bed, looks out, does the cat version of rolling her eyes, and settles herself disdainfully back on her perch. Her sister, Hera, puffs up her tail and retreats towards the other end of the house, indignant.

Indigo has come for a visit. She is our neighbour’s Boston terrier and she regularly comes over to remind us that she needs to love us – or that we need to love her. Unclear. She tears out of her backdoor, bounds down the steps, across the yard and up the stairs onto our deck. Once there, she skids to a halt somewhere near where the door opens and sort of hurls herself at the glass, hoping we’ll be there.

If we are home and open the door, her whole body quivers with excitement. Sometimes she accidentally starts to roll over before she gets all the way into the kitchen. Sometimes she runs in, does a wild loop around the kitchen island, and then throws herself gleefully onto her back while she wiggles her butt, already anticipating a good belly rub.

She never stays for long. After a good pet, I say, “Go on, go home” and she bolts back out the door and over to her house, happy.

I’m happy, too. Since I’m already standing, I grab one more sip of tea and start gathering things for work, trying to love myself as purely as that nutty dog loves me.