Me, When I’m Old
Saturday, April 11th, 2009
The old man’s afternoon began with an egg boiling, a ritual carried out at five minutes after five during the week and just after 4 on weekends. He had a small under-cabinet radio and he stood at the range and listened more than cooked, his mind half-listening and fully agreeing with conservative commentators. This was the routine: remove a pot from the metal drawer under the stove, turn the burner on so that it could heat, hold the pot under the faucet until it was a quarter full, then set it on the burner, watch the coils turn warm to orange, listen to the crackling under its metal bottom, and finally watch for the ripple through the water as it braced for something worse.
When the final crackles and hisses ceased, he would replenish the coffee and filter in the coffee maker and fill its clear-glass pot with water so it would be ready for early morning coffee. The coffee pot gave off its own hisses from the water spilled in the pouring. When the crackling stopped and both pots were quiet, he opened the refrigerator door and took an egg carton and set in on the countertop. He removed three eggs from the center, first, so that the container would be balanced, then attempted to lay the eggs softly in the water without dampening his my fingers. The water wasn’t warm enough to burn, but he went about it all gingerly, until he felt the light vibration in setting the egg against the non-stick metal.
This process was more about the senses for him than it was familiarity or rigidness to a scheme. He followed the same process when he younger, while he made breakfast for his kids and coffee for his wife. He hadn’t changed in all the years, more than 40 had passed since he was first married and 32 since he’d been divorced. The routine made him feel young again, like me be able to reclaim his mistakes. Not his youth, just his errors. His youth was too good to ever come back.
