

When she woke in the pink-walled bedroom, in the early light of dawn with the cold of night lingering, she would reach out to turn the small brass clock that had sat on her father’s writing table, fumbling to know the hour. The night, dark beyond darkness, receded. She looked out at the waterman out on the river, creeping slowly along his crab trot line, engine softly rumbling, well into another day more gray than the one before, dipping for crabs, as his father and grandfather and many who had gone before him, had done. 

She languidly turned the duvet down and away, raising herself from the warm cotton sheets, reaching for the heavy terry cloth robe, scented sweetly from yesterday’s laundry. She had not dreamed though felt a remembrance of a pink and calm world in her sleep, water gently lapping. The recollection bouyed her spirit, the hope that the early fog would rise from the grey river to reveal a warm autumn sun.  

With this thought, she rose, pulling the covers to return the bed to its precise, made form, ready to invite her back at the end of this day. She stepped to the window and studied the river . Except for the waterman, barren, silent. The month was October and she was grateful that she would be traveling south as the days grew shorter, the river greyer and the air cooler. For her, there is no surviving  winter here. 

No need for binoculars this morning. Everything paling away into the murk. She studied what she could see. The bridge across the river, over Maple Creek. In summer, taking city people to their homes on the other side of the river. Life, moving., energy. On this morning, looking for anything of color. Any movement. Any trace of urban vitality.

Urban vitality. The words jarred her back to the morning, happy thought. She tightened the belt of her terry robe, shuffling, headed  to the kitchen and hit the on button of the espresso machine. Necessity, a reminder of urban days and work day mornings and communal energy. Her own little Starbucks. Once the machine was on, she pulled milk, nonfat, because the doctor said so, from the refrigerator. Cantaloupe, no longer local, probably from California, but how can a morning begin without fruit. Wheat bread from the local market. Her favorite butter, the brand with a little zing. She was always grateful when the grocery store put it in sale. A treat to make the grey mornings a little sunnier.

A minute later, she remembered.  NPR. The radio in the kitchen hads also been her father’s, in his quiet, dark study. She felt connected to him, playing his old radio. No desire for a stereo system throughout the house. Maybe the radio took up more space and surely was not stylish, but it worked and brought her the news from Washington and New York. Places she had had her morning cappuccino so many times. Back in the working days. Before this quiet place.



