Mom: Hot Tea and Sweet Rolls.

Before dawn usually, I would hear, in the deep recesses of my mind, a shuffling around in the kitchen. Usually the coffee would start, depending on whether Dad had set it to come on the night before, but on Sunday it would be dishes. 

I would groan and throw a pillow over my fairly matted and dirty hair and try to sleep those last precious hours before Sunday school. Most of the time there was a warm body beside me, a better sleeper, rarely touched by the noise of a very deliberate lady clanking around trying to make breakfast and pick up the day-before-evidence of living.

My nose was always cold, a result of the torrential fan above my bed and mother’s winning desire to create an alaskan atmosphere in our home. She always left the lights off in the hallway to protect, never popped the doors when she closed them, and contained herself to the kitchen for the better part of the morning, until, at last, 8:00am would roll around and I would hear a small shuffling down the hallway.

I knew then, as always, that this meant in about 0.5 seconds, I would be gently coerced from the bed.

She knocked. I rose. She entered and placed two mugs of hot, sweet, milky tea on the bed stand. 

“I have sweet rolls,” she said, “We have to leave in about 45 minutes.”

She left the door to the bed room open. No going back to sleep now.

At this point, the warm body beside me rustled, rolled slowly over toward my direction and muttered between yawns, “I love your mother.”

She sat up, and I with her, our complimentary hair fuzzy and fluffy and tousled from heavy sleep, and we sipped our hot, sweet, milky tea.

This sort of morning happened with beautiful normalcy. 

After tea, we’d rise, rub our eyes and proceed to the kitchen to claim our sweet rolls (before Dad would eat them all) and then shuffle into the bathroom for the morning routine of hair taming. 

Mom would sit with Dad, reading the newspaper for a time (later she would become a news expert or junkie), already ready for church – in her lovely and organized skirt-suit and panty hose, some cute pumps and maybe a broach. And, she had great eye-lashes. I could never figure out quite how to do mascara like she did it – natural, full and pretty.

We took forever getting ready, and mom patiently would stand one foot out the door, bible, and sunday school lesson in hand, calling to us to come get in the car.

We ran, with our adolescent awkwardness, out the door, falling into the backseat, thinking of our intelligence and whether Ben or some boy would be there, taking for granted almost everything we had and went to Church.

My mom did this every Sunday for almost 18 years, except during the early years, I’m pretty sure it was high chairs, baby food and a less organized skirt-suit. But she did it. Roused me, fed me and took me, and whatever friend I needed as companionship to church.