Baby Blue Mornings

I eat my fruit in shallow bowls barley submerged in milk that is cold and white like snow, how I would imagine snow would taste if it did not melt into colorless water.

Blueberries lying in wait in the liquid, besprinkled with sugar dust, I dip the polished silver dip of the of the spoon, swirls of lavender and indigo circulating in undulations from the small round balls.

The milk transforms before my eyes, Fresh dye from the berries turning the milk a grey then mauve with each dip of the spoon.

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And so I regard berries in violet shades of summer and the matchbox house of my childhood. Where blackberries molted the crabgrass on the peripheries of our yard, where the chain linked fence restrained outstretched, overgrown blackberries bushes, poking through the holes on of the metal links like fingers of children.

Where my mother guided me to the lush bush pregnant with fat, juice filled berries that stained my hands and bare feet, and knees of my overalls, the juice bursting between my small teeth as I pressed my tongue to the roof my my mouth with the berries trapped between to extract the juice like a press.

And memories of berries fresh or congealed within my father’s morning blueberry bagels.

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The memory is bittersweet, faded around the edges, and blurred, those damp summer and lukewarm fall mornings with my father on the porch that protruded from our matchbox house. He would be up before the sun peeked through my blinds and soaked my comforter with streaks of apricot light. The honeyed smell of brewing coffee welled in my room, flushing the grogginess from my eyes. The smell of roasted coffee beans reminds me of him. Emerging from my room with a picture book under my arm, I’d pad into the kitchen with my pajamas still on and my father would open the screen door with his elbow, blueberry bagel in one hand, and coffee mug with loops of steam rising from it in the other. As he settled into one of the plastic deck chairs, he would balance the bagel on his knee and place the mug under him. My seat was the other knee where he’d situate me almost as effortlessly as he had balanced the bagel.

We would sit there, me reclined into my father’s shoulder were he would shift me every so often to keep his leg from going numb, reading together as the sky brightened and the seconds between passing cars grew shorter and shorter with the morning rush. He would give me one half of his sliced bagel, splotches of blue dotting the firm circle of bread and I’d pluck withered blueberries from the center, digging them out with my nubby fingers to taste the fruit and slight sweetened of bread, rolling them between my fingertips

Timing was always accurate, the book closing just as it was time for him to start a day filled with stethoscopes and crisp charts to scribble on. I like to think those mornings let him return to childhood again, that his days would sometimes be more like make believe games of playing doctor, I’d sit and watch his car back out of the driveway, left with bagel crumbs at my feet and the smell of his aftershave on my pajamas.

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