MORNINGS 4.25.2013

My first apartment, when I was nineteen, was on Blodgett St. in Burlington's Old North End.

I was so excited when I finally found it. I had been looking for a place for a couple months, driving up on the weekends from Brattleboro, crashing on dorm room floors and on living room couches.

In the meantime, still living my life in Bratt, I was learning how to read Tarot cards from a dear friend, taking my first college classes, and helping to build a house up on a mountain.

My friend, dear Chuck, had a dream about this new place, before I moved in, after I had met my new roommate and shook her hand. I had come home so excited, talking about it, wondering about it, worrying about it. His dream had something to do with the cherry tree outside the living room window. It bloomed and unfolded, he said, revealing two tarot cards slowly morphing into one, creating a conversation in meaning.

Years later, those cards' symbols are foggy in my memory—I haven't told the story in so long. He loved to tell it, and could do it so much better than I. Whatever was said, they heralded a message steeped in truth. (Whether or not I've experienced that truth over these years is something left for hindsight.)

Life away from home was hard at first—still is sometimes. The complexities of a budget, rent, utilities, groceries, etc. I couldn't find a decent job at first and my savings were running out. I ended up washing dishes at an Outback Steakhouse. I'd come home tired and wet and smelly.

But mornings in the kitchen on Blodgett St. were so lovely. We had a south-facing window. It shed light directly upon the kitchen table, where I sat with my morning cup of coffee. I drank it black in those days.

I made it then as I do now: with a single cup drip filter; putting the water on to boil first then preparing the grounds. The grounds and water combine, the steam issues forth, and the cup slowly fills.

Some quiet mornings, sitting at the kitchen table those first few minutes, the coffee still very hot, I’d witness something magnificent, something true that stills draws my attention.

I'd bring my face down close to my cup and see a fine mist shivering just above the black surface, fracturing violently at irregular intervals, like lake ice snapping into portentous cracks.

With the steam rising in curling ribbons, I’d sit in awe, hunched forward, staring, the time slowly passing. My roommate still asleep, the kitchen bright and breezy, I was grateful to witness the simplicity of this beauty, which had been, all the while, silently dancing beneath my nose—some bit of truth to start my day and carry me through.