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Nearly every weekday morning, when I was in grade school, my day would start with my mother waking me. My sluggish response was frequently met with the song “It’s time to get up, it’s time to get up, it’s time to get up in the morning.” If that did not succeed, she would simply take the covers off of me, pull my legs over the side of the bed, place my feet on the floor, and wait for the rest of my body to follow.
At some point in the interchange, there might even be an advisement that it was “Time to put your thinking cap on.” Yes, people actually did use those expressions at one point in time, and my mother seemed to truly enjoy them. They were her practical platitudes. She was a woman who could be buoyant and happy, and infectiously persuasive.
Then came our breakfast ritual. The tiny teapot filled with just enough tea for the two of us. There could be hot or cold cereal or perhaps an egg, but I most often opted for toast and tea, like my mother. So we two ladies could chat about life before I headed off to the rigors of Catholic school; memorizing multiplication tables, fielding colorful verbal insults from the nuns, which, in retrospect, were very entertaining, and jumping double dutch in the schoolyard.
