BUFFERS

For myself, mornings are a series of buffers. I wake up either to an alarm clock or that internal clock that keeps ticking at me to wake up. I take a buffer moment to get out of bed. Then it’s about a slow walk with my son strapped to me and the puppy on a leash. This buffer lasts about 25–45 minutes as I gear up for the chaos that ensues shortly after.

My son and I point out the airplanes, the fences, the walls, the birds, and the trees. We wave at the big trucks, and we tell peeps the pup to go potty. I get a chance to glance at my phone, picking up a few emails from mailing lists, and gathering my thoughts for the day.

When we get back it’s all about coffee. Iced coffee, hot coffee, french press, chemex, pour over, stove top espresso, instant via’s it doesn’t matter, but we need to make that coffee.

The boy sits in his Scandinavian designer high chair and signs “more” to me as if to say, nothing is not enough. We eat cheerios, banana’s, small silver dollar pancakes, we eat eggs, we eat some shredded wheat and when it’s all over we’ll have some of mama’s yogurt as well. We’re hungry, we must eat, and during the weekdays that food must be ritual. Cheerios, or grapnels, no sugar cereals.

Pack the little man’s lunch, and get him out to the car. I strap him in and ask for my kiss to which he’s usually kind to oblige. I share an “I love you” with my wife, and a kiss for her too, then blow kisses until they disappear around the bend of the allyway. At which point I get thirty minutes of buffer to myself, to sit with another cup of coffee, shave, or just sit and listen to the radio.

Then I go.