Things That Glow

Weekend mornings are a force to be reckoned with.

There's something so sacred and pure about Saturday and Sunday mornings, and I've always anticipated them in a way that both settles me and spins me around. I'm giddy with excitement when I feel them coming. It doesn't take a lot, in fact, to impress me on a weekend morning. Elaborate morning routines need not apply! All it takes is that sweeping air of freedom to scoop me up and settle down with me, preferably very close to a coffee pot and a crossword puzzle.

There have been several periods of time in my life when I worked regularly on Saturday mornings, and Matthew has almost always worked weekends. Even when I was a slave to the alarm clock on those mornings, I'd still relish them. They just aren't like weekday mornings, not in stature and not in spirit. For one, there's much less traffic. People act a bit more civilized, perhaps because they're calmer and able to actually be in the moment. Even when you're working on a weekend morning, you feel the tranquility, the stability of well-rounded freedom. It's quite like the world's on vacation -- after all, vacations are good simply because every day feels like a weekend.

I wish that I had the ability (by this, I mean the desire) to wake up early on weekend mornings so I could get out into the world as the sun is coming up, bathed in a glow of the morning light and the waking earth. But, on the contrary, I am one who sees sleeping in as the most incredible and powerfully intoxicating things on the planet. My father is a very early riser -- so early, in fact, that I think he could have a whole extra career, just to take place in all of his morning hours, when he is so alert and, well, with it. And every time I'm with him, either at my parents' house or on vacation, I wish desperately that I could get my sad, pitiful body out of bed so that I could venture out with him, collecting coffee and newspapers and breakfast at a diner. I've always wanted to be one of those people, those morning people, but at the same time, I feel such a vast, indescribable pleasure from sleeping in on weekends that I can't imagine waking up early by choice. To wake up at seven a.m. and realize it's the weekend, then to roll back over and fall back into sleep, that is one of the best feelings I know of.

The really good thing about living with people who get up early is that sometimes they spend all that morning time making you something special to eat. Or, sometimes it just means that they wake up early and go to breakfast without you. Depends on what kind of folks you're running around with. Now, it goes without saying that one of the very best things about weekend mornings is, truly, the breakfasts. There is a reason that this whole "breakfast all day" thing actually became popular -- it's sort of brilliant. And by "sort of brilliant," I mean that breakfast all day should, for crying out loud, actually stop at some point. There comes a time in my weekend day when I really just want to move on to the next meal, you know?

But, about the popularity of breakfast, brunch, what have you -- have you seen these lines outside of restaurants for brunch? They loop like languid snakes down the sidewalks, featuring not only stilettos, but also pajamas. (This is another story altogether, this thing about pajamas in public. I'll spare us all the pain by not talking about it right now.) Then you get in to the restaurant, and people sit too close to you, and everyone is either recovering from being drunk or trying to get drunk, or sometimes even both, and the coffee is usually cold and the servers are praying for death, and you feel rushed and there's no space for your newspaper and that's when you (okay, that's when I) wish to be at home. Where you belong. Solitude. Space. Hot coffee. Nary a fancy shoe or a Bloody Mary in sight. Ahhh.

I suppose I might be a bruncher if I didn't like to cook so much, or if I was comfortable in crowds, or if I liked vodka in the morning. There are some breakfast outings that I like to have, though, so don't get me wrong. I'm not a total breakfast-time curmudgeon. Meghan and I used to have incredible breakfast-snack tours when she lived in Andersonville, which is the perfect strolling-around neighborhood. I loved meeting her there, the New York Times nudging out of her big leather bag, sometimes sunglasses, sometimes raincoats. We'd drink good coffee outside, shielding our eyes from the sun with the newspaper more than actually reading it. Then, breakfast sandwiches at the Italian deli, cinnamon rolls at Ann Sather, Swedish pancakes with lingonberries at Svea, where we'd get terrible service because we arrived too close to (their strange, early) closing time. We'd go antiquing around, poking around at furniture stores and books, sweating through our shirts on the day we bought slabs of marble and carried them back to her house.

Strolling-around weekend mornings are good, and stay-at-home weekend mornings are just as heavenly, but in a different way. It's perhaps all my weekend mornings from growing up that created my allegiance to the latter, though. There were things happening on the breakfast front, first of all, and not just the beloved burnt toast and English muffins. There were the Smurfs, of course, and all the other 80's cartoons, which were a perfect accompaniment to all sorts of breakfast treats. There were doughnuts from Mel-O-Cream sometimes, and everyone had their particularities. Mom liked the old fashioned, my brother liked the long johns with white icing, and Dad either really did like all of them or else he just told us that so that we'd get to pick first. Just to note, though -- I don't think my dad has ever met a doughnut he didn't like. He's sort of a connoisseur in that department. Oh, and one of the greatest photographs of all time is me in a high chair, bib on, eating a doughnut with a fork, and my brother, just three years older, approaching from behind, struggling under the weight of the gallon of milk that he'd bringing to the table. Is it likely that I truly remember the streaks of sunlight on the faces of my family that morning, or is it just the photograph that chased my memory to that place?

There were pancake mornings, when our plates would be graced with the letters of our names, flapjack style. There were French toast mornings, waffle mornings, and egg mornings. There were definitely biscuit mornings, which came with not only jam, but also (okay, whose good idea WAS this, anyway?) icing. Yes, delicious icing. It sounds odd at first, biscuits and icing, but, when you think about it, it's really no different than doughnuts or pancakes -- it's just that the sugar wears a different costume. There were muffin mornings, which were my favorite, because they featured the most incredibly tiny blueberries that came in the tiny, tuna-can-sized tin that were in the box of muffin mix. I had a love for those muffins, and I loved to help make them, carefully, carefully folding in the blueberries to the batter so it wouldn't stain it purplish-blue. It was with that experience that I learned what it meant to fold with a spatula, and it is the memory of that slightly acidic, yet sweet, taste of the batter that shapes all of my muffin-making experiences that I have now.

The things that I love about weekend breakfasts now are all the foods that I don't have time for during the week. I'm one of those chronically under-breakfasted people who tries so, so hard to eat in the morning before work, but finds it to be so, so difficult. So, when weekend mornings come, I'm elated. I actually end up eating breakfast on these days, not just wishing I had. Saturdays and Sundays around here mean bagels sometimes, always from this divine bagel shop in Evanston, or sometimes muffins or monkey bread. Sometimes it's biscuits and gravy, or biscuits and icing, or sometimes waffles or pancakes. More often, though, it's eggs. Frittatas, or egg sandwiches, or just scrambled eggs. Sometimes eggs on top of dhal and rice, with lots of hot sauce. Sometimes omelets with ginger, garlic, and carrots, just like the ones at this unbelievable Korean diner down the street from us.

Matthew's easy, because he will eat absolutely anything for breakfast. Leftovers are the greatest gift to him in the mornings, and he practically swoons for chili or pizza or chicken when he rolls out of bed. I'm a tougher customer, though, if you couldn't have guessed. I feel awkward eating lunch- and dinner-foods in the morning -- almost guilty, even. I need things that scream breakfast or, at least, call it out in a reasonably loud, outdoor voice. Recently, he stopped working Saturday mornings, and we spend them together now, casting ourselves around in slippers and plotting our day, plotting our meals. The good thing about him (well, one of the good things about him) is that he'll always wait around while I figure out the perfect breakfast thing. Of course, I have this, um, methodical streak in me, so we're lucky if we even see the breakfast before noon. But, really, if there's coffee in the pot, cartoons on the television, and a newspaper to be found, then we've got all the time in the world.