Waiting for 10:00

It is Fathers' Day. It is 6am in the morning on Fathers' Day.

The streetlight is glowing orange outside the window. The paper man just drove by tossing rolled-up Sunday morning newspapers from the window of his car.

It is Fathers' Day, and there's a reservation across town for us for brunch at 10am. It's a long-running annual tradition, and I am fortunate to be on the receiving end of it.

We've been shifting our schedules now for two days. We go to bed and wake up a half-hour earlier each day in preparation for our flight over the Atlantic in six days. By the time we leave, we will have shifted three hours, hopefully enough to lessen the shock of the time difference between here and there.

So it is very early on Sunday morning, and the sky is only now beginning to show some hint of daylight, and Trudy and I and the boy (although his resistance is great) are up.

Trudy has just fetched the paper from where it landed in the front yard. The boy is (his resistance is great) still in bed. And here I am at the computer in the predawn light.

She walks into the doorway trying to conceal a guilty conscience.

I am having a bowl of cereal, she says.

She waits briefly for a reaction from me and then continues, because 10:00 is so far away.

I nod my head and smile.

She squints, knowing that I saw the guilt in her eyes, and then she turns and walks off to the kitchen.

So it is Fathers' Day. It is very early on Fathers' Day. And 10:00am is indeed a very long way off.

I think I'll have some cereal, too.

Happy Fathers' Day, dads.

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