Sugar crystal slush cover on the ground, the yard, the car this morning. Slickery noises as the car tires skid and catch even at a snail’s pace on the tight turns in the neighborhood. Halfway through the morning, a glance out my window reveals huge fat white feather-flakes slowly drifting downward; nothing sticks.
The only way is through. Through the darkness, the cold, the wet, the dreamtime of winter. Just as everything natural is slowing down, turning inward, hibernating, our calendar and schedules and lives are speeding up: full speed to the holidays. This time of year is always grueling somehow.
In Swedish, there is a word that means “to close your eyes” – blunda. I think that it’s so much more elegant to use this sparing way of describing what takes me 4 words to say in English. The world is closing its eyes right now, it’s settling in for a nap. Världen blundar, den somnar. There’s another one: somna. It means “to fall asleep”. It comes from the same root as somnolent, but sadly, we never say in English that we are somning. We’re dropping off. We’re falling asleep. Falling. Into sleep.
Anders is gone this week, and I’m single-parenting. I can’t imagine doing this full-time, forever, though I know I’d manage if I have to, as I do when these short periods happen; a few days, a week. It makes me appreciate my husband all the more: all the things he does with the kids. Just the fact that he gets up earlier than I do and fixes them breakfast every day is worthy of my adulation. I HATE getting up early, and I LOATHE the very idea of food if I do have to get up early. Fixing cereal with sour milk (yeah, it’s a Swedish thing) is enough to make my gorge rise. Early morning gorge.
Haha! that made me laugh.
I never used to eat breakfast, partly because my stomach has always been queasy in the a.m. For year and years and years I never ate breakfast. The other part is that I don’t really like very many typical breakfast foods. I don’t like yogurt or hot cereals or cereal with milk. In fact, this late in life I wonder if my lifelong aversion to milk might not actually be some degree of lactose-intolerance, but then I think of my ongoing love affair with cheese and shake my head. Nah.
These days I actually DO eat breakfast, at least on weekdays, at work. But it’s not until about 2 hours after I’ve gotten up, and there are only breakfast rolls with cheese or cucumber or jam or tomato (and ham or liver pate and pickles on Fridays) or some strange Swedish combination of the above. One of my colleagues cuts a roll in half and puts jam and sliced cucumbers on it. Others put jam and cold, sliced cheese. I just shake my head at them. I’ve been at the company for 3 years now and my breakfast, whether with cheese and tomato or cheese and ham is always melted for 20 seconds in the microwave. It’s SO DELICIOUS (especially with this cheese.
I can tell you that for the past 3 years, EVERY SINGLE day, some one of my colleagues has commented on my melted cheese breakfast roll in some way, but never NOT once has anyone else tried one. They are SO missing out. Of course, I have never tried jam with cucumbers or jam with cold cheese, so I guess it works both ways.
This post nearly degenerated into a love song to cheese, but I managed to backspace and delete in time. So, I’ll go with breakfast instead, I guess. Do you eat breakfast? Every day? Do you eat the same thing or do you vary your morning meal choices? Would you eat jam with cold, sliced cheese?
Ginormous Blindingly Bright Birthday Wishes to davesanngel!