Mornings Like This

It’s 7a.m., and my Mom is opening the door to the small upstairs bedroom that I’m crashing in. She asks me how I’m feeling, and I mumble something about feeling sleepy, a small smile playing across my face as I stretch my arms over my head and roll onto my side, further wrapping myself in blankets.

“Do you want Tim to take Justin to band lessons?” my Mom sincerely asks me.

“No, no, it’s ok,” I say, “I’m getting up.”

My dog jumps up on the bed and licks my ear. The slobber causes me to shriek, but I am laughing and smiling nonetheless, controting to try to escape the rest of the wet willie. I throw the covers off and head downstairs towards my little brother’s bedroom. On the way down, I run into my stepdad (not literally).

“Hiya, Sam,” he says, climbing the last few stairs to the second floor. “Goodmorning, Tim,” I reply. I walk down a second set of stairs and cross a hall into a small dark bedroom that contains a beautiful sleeping boy.

“Justin,” I say, gently patting his back, “It’s time to get up now. You have band lessons.”

I will need to use more prodding to get him up, eventually pulling the covers off of him so that the cool basement air will wake him up. We have a schedule-things to do, places to see, fun to be had. No more of this sleeping nonsense. Pulling the covers off is just the trick. Now he’s up and complaining about how chilly it is.

“Well, put some clothes on,” I say with a small chuckle.

I leave to go get ready myself, leaving him, standing in pajama shorts, looking through his dresser drawers for what to wear. I walk into the bathrrom, and before I can close the door, my Mom comes bustling in. I’m still dealing with the remnants of sleep and so am slightly uncoordinated. I stumble back a few steps to try to make space for her. I look at her, trying to process what she’s saying about how she needs to grab something from the bathroom and how she’s wondering if I’ve seen a bunch of plastic bags bunched together and do I know where her shoes are. I think I may have seen the plastic bags and suggest possible places to look, as well as leave the bathroom to help her look for them. I don’t find them, but she finds them after a few minutes of searching. Turns out they weren’t what I thought I had seen.

My stepdad helps her look for her shoes, so I return to getting ready, getting dressed, washing my face, and brushing my teeth. It’s getting closer and closer to the time my Mom has to go, so she starts getting a bit frantic. When it seems like she’s going to be late if she waits any longer, she finds her shoes.

She’s just about to leave but suddenly remembers, “Justin has tutoring today, so he needs to take his pill.”

The message is communicated to my stepdad, who is on it. He will make sure my brother gets his pill. Then my stepdad leaves. Then my little brother and I leave for 8:00a.m. band lessons.

At the beginning of the summer, I wasn’t staying at my Mom’s house very much. The reasons why would require books, not blogs, of explanation, and so I won’t go into them here. I do want to say though that I guess I didn’t realize what I was missing over there. Over there, at times like those, I really feel like I’m part of a family. In those times when the t.v.’s off and everyone’s jostling around, helping each other out, bumping into one another’s lives and what needs to be done in them, I feel that something really special happens. A family is formed. A true family. Not just four people sharing a home and the occasional meal, but a group of people supporting eachother and enjoying the wonderful chaos of everyday life. It’s about enjoying whatever life may bring, not because it always brings great, momentous things, but because the people who you experience it with are in and of themselves great. Mornings like this make me happy. Mornings like this, I’m coming to realize, make life worth living.