Dad 2022: Fall Mornings

In the morning you join me in the kitchen while I cook breakfast and we listen to music. You bounce in your bouncer and I dance in my slippers. Lately, it’s been lots of Beatles and Kinks. Then we sit at the table and I put on your bib and mom comes downstairs and we eat our omelets and we feed you. After, Mom clocks in for work. I pour another cup of coffee and I play with you on the floor. I stand you on my chest and I lift you in the air and we roll around the carpet. I’m greedy for your giggles. I give you a bottle and then I take you outside for a walk in the stroller and try to get you to nap. And that’s our morning, these days. You are almost eight months old. You are teething, and it’s hard to see you in distress. You need a lot of attention. Mom and I try to soothe you and distract you, even as we’re in awe of the denticles springing from your gums. You are changing, every day.

It is fall now and there is a slight chill in the morning. I like feeling the cool air when I walk Apricot early. It brings memories of my father, of me as a boy, us walking in fields at sunrise, our English Setter, Patches, running ahead, sniffing out pheasant. My father in his big orange jacket and hunters cap, his slow and steady gait, the two of us moving across the frosted ground in late November. My father sharing something he loves, sharing this place of solitude with his son, these woods his haven, even if this sport isn’t for me. I am still half awake, shuffling along in my oversized boots. The two of us and our dog. The outdoors make for some of our best times, father and young son, him pointing out tracks and droppings, bird calls and skunk cabbage, brush lines and bushy groves, a cattail slough. Grassland. Raw wind from the valley. Wool gloves. We talk and he tells me stories over hot cocoa and pancakes in the booth at the diner on the way back home.