When I open my eyes, I can feel the water moving feet below me. I get the sensation that I am floating. It is quiet. I can smell the subtle trace of brewed coffee in the sole of the boat, and I feel the gentle ushering of a breeze on my face as it slips in through the back door. For a moment, I breathe it all in. Rays of sunlight wash over the room, and tangle in my hair. I listen to the clap of water against the rocky shore and the way it whispers against the boat in currents, rolling in and out of the little cove, and rocking the boat back and forth like a mother with her child.
I let the blankets slip away as I sit up and stretch. The aroma of coffee is stronger now. My feet find the cool tiled surface of the floor. I stand up and look around. For a moment, I stare out the broad windows of the houseboat at the shining, gossamer waves of Lake Powell, a lake vast enough that it could be mistaken for the sea. A maze of rock juts out of the water as far as one can see, sunburned as summer vacationers. Like the colors in the sky at sunset, the rock’s many layers reveal the depth of the water year after year through shifts in soft pinks, rustic reds and oranges, and the occasional white-blurred line.
On the inside of the houseboat, there is one small bedroom that my parents share and a bath that one passes on the way to the back deck. My sister and I sleep in the breakfast nook, lined with sunlit windows towards the front of the boat. The deep corner booth table unfolds into a bed that is ideal for sleeping in late, with its spacious cushions and fort-like feel. At the heart of the boat is the kitchen, up against one wall with a center island for the sink, marbled countertops and mahogany cabinets for stashing food above. Directly across is a camel colored leather couch for lounging in. It is a cohesive space, open and airy enough for me to see almost everything from where I stand near the breakfast nook.
Closing my eyes, I lean back and stretch. When I open them, my eyes immediately catch on the gleam of the coffee pot, next to the stove. I pad across the room, sand clinging to my bare feet with each step. It is a comfort. A coffee cup waits for me, set aside by someone who truly understands love. I lift the pot from its cradle, feeling the gentle pull and slosh of its contents: half a pot more. Cup in hand, I let the sacred liquid flow into my cup, appreciating the dark allure of its amber color, the many tones it conceals like a copper penny, but always guaranteed to bring good luck.
It is a morning ritual in my family. Always, when I was little, the smell of coffee would linger on my dad’s breath as he whispered good morning into my ear or swooped in to kiss my forehead, my eyes fluttering open to the smell intrinsic to my father’s love. At our local breakfast haunt, my sister and I would order mugs of hot chocolate towered high with whipped cream, but always I would long for coffee. It meant you were grown up, that you didn’t have to ask are we there yet on a road trip, because you already knew how much further. It meant that you read the newspaper at breakfast, leaving behind the half-moon rusty-colored rim from your coffee cup that said you had been there.
Clasping the cup with both hands, I hold it close, letting the steam curl into upward spirals. I breathe in deeply, taking in the rich, bold contours of flavor. I feel the room dissolve as I raise the cup and the warm liquid rushes towards my lips. Divine. The world comes back into focus, sharper this time. It is not the caffeine kicking in so soon, but rather the sudden but complete and tingling feeling of warm content, spreading from my stomach outward.
On Saturdays, my sister and I would curl up on the couch with our coffee and watch Gilmore Girls late into the day. Sometimes, when we go back home now, we try to carry on this tradition, slinking out of our rooms in our pajamas, bleary eyed, reaching for our coffee cups and talking of dreams as we wait for the coffee to brew. But it is never the same as it was before. We are only imitating what it was like before we went away to school and came back changed, disconnected from one another after living in our separate worlds. It is our way of resurfacing, breaking the seal of the present and pretending for a while that we can go back to how things were when everything was simple. At the center of all this, we hold onto our coffee cups in our laps, watching episodes of Gilmore Girls that we have seen so many times before, but continue to cherish.
I can’t remember when I started liking coffee. How the bitterness seems to warm your insides, the intense flavor bold and exact. My mom and my sister take theirs with cream and sugar. I take mine black and untouched, like my dad. There is a lot that you can learn about a person, just by knowing how they take their coffee in the mornings.
I peer out the glass doors of the front deck, facing the shore. The sand is quiet and untouched. I pause and listen, soon hearing the soft murmur of conversation winding its way to me from the back deck of the boat. The door is cracked; my dog watches me as I approach. Immediately I feel the heat of the wooden deck on my toes as I slip into the sunlight, my skin prickling from the sudden change of temperature. It’s a good day to swim.
The first words on their lips, “happy birthday” feel warm. Kisses from my dog, pinches from my sister, and sure enough, a bear hug from my dad. My mom gives my arm a squeeze then makes a beeline for the stove. When I settle into her abandoned chair, I hear the tinkle of M&M’s dropping into a bowl and I smile. M&M pancakes—a perfectly reasonable sixteenth birthday request.
It was the summer I spent in the in-between, a recent high-school graduate waiting for the approach of my next four years at Kalamazoo College, far away from home and from everything I had come to know. So I sat there soaking up the sun and waiting—waiting for M&M pancakes and for the far-off distance of fall to close in on my summer.
The three of us, my dad perched on a cooler, my sister and I in folding chairs, chat about past birthday years, and he starts to tell stories of his own childhood. Sipping my coffee, I would listen, and watch the water ripple like melting glass. He told the story of him breaking his arm while messing with a tractor, and the one about him and his cousin dropping a bee hive and running, but not quite fast enough for the swarm. These are the stories that I remember. What I remember more is looking up at the porcelain fired sky, painted like the color of a robin’s eggs, speckled with sunlight.
I remember walking to the edge of the boat in a daze, sitting down on the metal frame, and dangling my feet in the cool morning chill of the lake water—mesmerized—and watching tiny fish dart into patches of lighter blue then back into the shadows. I remember changing into my swimsuit before breakfast and lying parallel to the water eyes closed, letting the breeze lick my belly and tousle my hair.
When the pancakes came, they were glorious. Warm and light enough to dissolve in your mouth, with a melting gooey inside as freckled as my face with M&Ms. I loved the sticky flood of syrup, and that feeling of being made whole again as the pancake grew smaller, bite-by-bite. It was something to savor. Leaving a pool of syrup behind, I licked the chocolate paste from my fork and settled back into a dream-like state.
I remember waking later, flat on my back on the edge of the boat, feeling the pulse of heat run through my veins. I stood up, braced myself for the sudden coldness that was to come, and dived off the back of the boat. It was like slipping into a dream. I floated on my back for a while then dove to the bottom again before surfacing to pull myself up onto the hot deck where I would lay, shaking like a leaf, water spreading like a star around me as I attempted to dry.
Lake Powell, I would say later with a sigh. That day was one of those moments in life that you could live in forever, content in the before and after. Consciously, you try to soak up every moment, every flash of ecstasy you can get before it is too late, and the moment is gone—passed. The day passed, just like that. A flux between sun and water, a day marked on a calendar, not for what it was every year, but for what it became that day. The details slip between the cracks of my memory, but are summoned when something reminds me and I wish I could have stayed there longer.
I like to think back on the crackling fire that night as we roasted marshmallows, smoke filling the air, our shadows dancing across the fiery rock of the enclave—a beach to ourselves—as we laughed, gorged ourselves on sticky s’mores, and lived. That night, I saw my first two shooting stars tear across the sky, one right after the other. I let my wishes trail behind them like bright ribbons in the sky, their color fading into the night, but never lost. Now, I let my memories trail also, tied to the experiences I have had, and connected to who I am now. It was in this starlight that I realized how wonderful the in-between can be, the safety and content of it, but more importantly, it is moments and entire memories like this that are essential to our existence, as they become our vehicle for living.
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