I wake up. The first thing I do is look over at the clock. It is 6:57am...much better. Why was I so keyed up these past few days? Was it simply too much work and not enough play?

What a difference a couple of extra hours of sleep can make.

I walk down the hall to let Luigi outside into the backyard for his morning sniff and pee. I then I make myself a pot of dark roast and  pick out my favorite "Second Cup" coffee mug from the shelf. I favor this one cup over all the rest. It's white, and shorter and wider than most mugs. When I drink from it, the bridge of my nose doesn't hit the rim of the cup. It's the perfect fit.

Why am I telling you this? It's such a ridiculously small detail.

But the devil is in the details. We live in super-sized times; loveless and hurried times. There is no time left. This or that must get done. We get more and more done and go faster and faster. We are in speeding cars unable to see the details of our own lives passing us by.

Where are we going in such a hurry, and why?
 

"Are we there yet?" my brother and I call out in unison from the back seat of our family's 66 Caprice. 

"Five more minutes." say my parents in unison.

We are driving along a gravel road somewhere in the southern Ontario countryside, headed towards our family's favorite beach on Lake Simco. It's a swelteringly hot, dry summer's day. These are the days I remember most. The only way to deal with the heat is to pack up a cooler with sandwiches, soft drinks and ice and get to the water's edge as fast as humanly possible.

"Are we there yet?" my brother and I call out in unison from the back seat. We fidget. Mother says, "Sit down and put on your seatbelts. Now!"

The passenger compartment is a whirlwind of hot summer air as all the windows are wide open; our hair dances around our faces, the backs of our legs are moist where they make contact with the blue vinyl seats. My mother wears a hairband  to keep her hair from blowing into her eyes.

I look out the real window of the car at the trail of dust that the tires whip up from the gravel road. It reminds me of the vapor trail of a speeding jet. We are getting closer and closer to the cooling blue waters of the lake. We can hardly wait.

I wonder what happened to that dust, when did it finally settle? I wish it were still hanging in the air just now, and that we were all still here, still ridding together, hot yet laughing and looking forward to the future; where my father's death was still an unimaginable event, and where my happy childhood summer days stretched out endlessly before me like the gravel road under the wheels of our 66 Caprice...and where daytrips to the cooling waters of Lake Simco would last forever.

"Are we there yet?"

Yes...we are there yet.

I don't' know why I am crying now. I haven't cried in a long time.

And so a new day begins...