Saturday Morning

He got up early to write. That was the best time to write because his mind was fresh and clear. It was his favorite time of the day. It was, he thought, the best part of the day.

His late father was right. Come to think of it, he had been right about almost everything. The simple, important things. When you got beyond the surface level people and things, family was the most important thing in life. You really have a lot less friends than you think you have. All-out effort and hard work usually pay off in the end. And getting up early so yo could see what the new day was going to bring. He had especially been right about this.

The new dawn’s light filtered through the blinds behind the bed. By its color and hue he knew what time it was without checking a watch or clock. He made his way downstairs and turned left through the dining room into the kitchen. He reached up into the pantry and brought out his favorite writing mug, the one he’d picked up in that old bookstore in Natchez, Mississippi, and brewed the first cup of coffee in the low glow of the stove light.

He didn’t turn on any overhead lights in the kitchen. It ruined the ambient, natural glow of the kitchen in the morning. It all mixed seamlessly with the twilight pouring through the kitchen windows, fresh and new. Last night’s storms seemed to have washed everything clean.

If you were lucky and the sky was clear, you awakened to this natural light show, where the moon was still visible directly overhead, and the air was awash in this mosaic of early morning colors — blue, orange, and yellow — redirected by the trees surrounding the property, and into each room, in different ways; no two rooms were the same.

The sun was rising in the east, over the wide river that moved slowly by on its way south, just a few hundred yards down the slope behind the house.

The coffee ready now, he took the full, hot, steaming cup and moved back through the dining room and through the living room, and into what he called the writing room. Others might have called it a Carolina Room.

It had been a screened in porch in the house’s early days, built in 1935 before the great world war, and closed in on three sides but open to the air. He wondered how many past residents had sat out on the porch in the mornings, sipping their coffee as he was now doing, or winding down with a colder beverage after another hard day of good work on the base or elsewhere. Had any of those officers fought in World War 2? Or Korea or Vietnam? Probably.

They had their wars, and he had his. All in the distant past now. It had changed him just as it had changed them. He made his way through his days and moved within and around the people around him now with different opinions, perspectives and priorities than almost all of them had. And he had his reasons. Quite often, he felt like an outsider. His father had been right with that thing about friends.

The room was now a part of the house rather than a porch. Bricked in on the three sides where the screens had once been, and with windows on the front and side now that extended from three feet off the floor almost to the ceiling. A set of glass French doors opened off the back of the room to a stone patio that was surrounded by gardens and flower bushes.

On either side of the doors out to the patio, there were recessed bookshelves built into the wall. They were filled with books he had gathered over the years. Some he had read. Some he had not yet started. But he would get to them. The subject matter was diverse. History, fiction, classics, memoir, biography, non-fiction, anthologies, psychology. Poetry. Ernest Hemingway, Tim O’Brien, Philip Roth, Ezra Pound, Thomas Wolfe, David Halberstam, Cormac McCarthy, Pat Conroy. And other books by fellow writers he had helped review and edit. And some others written by fellow war veterans.

Two older, standalone bookcases he had found in Islamorada lined one wall, stacked here and there with papers, drafts, and notes, some years old now, waiting to be picked back up again. Their reclaimed island wood gave the room a weathered, coastal feel. And the coast inspired him. It had always been this way with his writing, whether it was California, Carolina or Florida. And here, in this room that had tall, wide windows on three sides and measured twenty by ten feet, he had brought the coast with him.

A lone Polynesian chair sat in one corner, and the walls were adorned with scenes from San Diego, the Crystal Coast, the Caribbean, the Hawaiian Islands, and the Keys. Emerald Isle, Beaufort, Atlantic Beach, the Caymans, Barbados, the Turks and Caicos, Oahu, Maui, Kauai, Key Largo, Tavernier, and Marathon. The Breedlove dreadnought acoustic guitar sat in the corner opposite the chair, to be picked up and played when he needed to get off his feet for a few minutes. It helped him think sometimes. Sometimes a song brought back a memory, and the memory of an event and the period of time in which it had happened gave him a new idea.

On the wall opposite the standing writing desk, his revered old longboard, the one he had picked up all those years ago in San Diego and the first one he ever had, rested horizontally on a wall rack below a five by three foot photo of him surfing the venerable Threes surf break just off Waikiki. His wife had taken it years ago on their first trip there together and given it to him as a birthday present. It was his favorite item in the room. It showed him navigating the right-hand wave atop the board that now sat below it.

He stood at the writing desk now, coffee cup to his left-hand side, looking out the windows and across the woods that led down to the wide river. Although it was the first week of spring, the hardwood trees were still bare. A few evergreens dotted the property, standing out among their leafless companions, forlorn and lonesome.

As he watched, a doe appeared over the crest of the slope and stopped, staring in his direction. She looked as though she was pondering his presence in her domain. After a few seconds, she moved on, oblivious to the thoughts now cascading through his mind.

This was how it always happened. The thoughts would suddenly appear in his mind, and he had to get them down in writing before they disappeared again, sometimes, never to return. His was a busy mind, and it was time to get to work.

Glen Hines is the author of five books and the highly-regarded Bring in the Gladiators, Observations From a Former College Football Player Who Was Never Able to Become a Fan, all available at Amazon.com and Barnes and Noble. He is the writer and producer of the book and podcast Welcome to the Machine, available on most podcast platforms. His next book will be published in the fall of 2023. His writing has also been featured in Sports Illustrated, Task & Purpose, and the Human Development Project.