Rainey Blogs on Some Days

She [Rosie] was seizing the day her way—a made bed meant you were in their world. All kids wanted to dive into bed and be lying down safely, especially until about noon. --Anne Lamott, Imperfect Birds , 154. At my age, sleeping in is no longer a gift. I suppose because I recognize that one never knows how many more mornings of coffee, cool air, and cardinals singing cacophonous songs there are to go. So in middle age, sleeping in seems more like a punishment. This is a big difference between us and the mutant ninja teenagers, who still have so much of life ahead that sleeping until noon seems like a rationale thing to do. But for me, getting up early while the streets are silent and the sun is rubbing its sleepy eyes, starting its daily ascent, is so much better than rising up into a bright midday sun. I am not opposed to an afternoon nap now and again though.

I visited my Grandpa Rainey—my dad’s father—in the hospital the other day and he asked me if I like coffee. “Yes, the first thing I do when I get up in the morning is to go start the coffee,” I told him. “That’s how I knew she wasn’t going to make it,” he had told me in March when I was home for my Grandma Rainey’s funeral. “She stopped drinking coffee.” If there is any metaphor for life that both sides of my family shared, it is coffee. As long as we are drinking coffee, we are alive. We have a reason to get up in the morning, to brew a pot, to hear the coffee moan and travail until the dripping stops and the coffee pots rests, her work done for another day. We pour a cup, put in our cream and sugar, grab a Bible or newspaper, and come alive for a new day. We start the day this way during the deep chill of a winter morning or on dewy spring days just after dawn. When we drink coffee, we are alive. When I was growing up, I was not as close to my dad’s family because my parents divor...