August 13, 2013

breakfast

"Are you ready to leave us by the side of the road?"
she asks in room 802 of the Best Western
in downtown Charleston. We are on Day 2 of our road trip,
summer's last hurrah with the boys before school starts and we lose ourselves
to the concentric itineraries of the must-do's and the still-to-be-done's.
I think she's kidding, but a look of genuine worry crosses her face, as if
backseat squabbles and long hours sandwiched in the car might have done me in.
I laugh, shake my head. "I'm starving," I say," and we ride the elevator down to breakfast.
The coffee is weak, the eggs undercooked, the bananas overripe.
But I know a feast when I see one.