The Crown

So it's up again at 3 am, and some of you are not awake. Well. But I write anyway, and hope when you wake you'll join me for some coffee. I'm sure I'll still be drinking it.

The dog gets pissed when I wake so early, and buries his head in the blanket to shut out the light. The cats are ecstatic...they love water out of place and the early morning hours. I think they shape my dreams, being dreamy characters, and they have to be awake and roaming in the early hours to chase mine.

Last night I dreamed that I was a bull-rider in the county circuit, and that my Mom was alive, and I was still taking care of her. I won a crown for the bull riding, but lost it the same day to another competitor. For some reason, the county ladies association had asked Mom to cook some suet, and she couldn't remember how because of her dementia.

I think it was the tuna salad that I made yesterday. Mom was known far and wide for cooking two things...her tuna salad and her potato salad. Many who have eaten these have been sucked up into their own private Rapture, just from the taste. I learned to make it long ago, as a peeler of eggs for the tuna salad, and a peeler of potatoes for the potato salad.

Many of my earliest memories of growing up surround her peeling potatoes. She was forever on some kind of diet, and we did not eat junk food. "Fast food" was a piece of potato snatched from the cold water she soaked them in, after she peeled and diced them. To this day, I love the taste of a raw potato.

In February, it will have been 3 years since she died. And I still dream that I take care of her as I peel the eggs...