Free Range Eggs

Hadley is making oatmeal, and I’m frying eggs for breakfast when Jesse walks into the kitchen and says he’s going for a run.

“I wish I had time to run,” is my encouraging response.

“How about this afternoon?” Jesse suggests pulling a hoodie over his head.

I pull butter from the fridge, slice a pat off, and drop it into the pan. I’m calculating all the things I could do this afternoon; all the things I should do, too. I cannot tell the difference anymore. If I want to do “X,” than here are the steps to getting that accomplished. If “Y” sounds like fun, then here are the fifty-two things that need to get done first.

Jesse though, he’s an optimist with enough energy to fuel a plane to Australia. Problems are not for brooding over, they are fun tricks to be solved. I brood, which is what I was planning on doing, but Jesse’s talking to me with his back to our kitchen window where the sun is rising, turning the sky all sorts of oranges and blues. I’ve always wanted a window above a kitchen sink, and a run this afternoon sounds perfect, so I tell him that.

“Of course,” I say to Hadley when it’s just the two of us, “I could’ve run yesterday.”

Hadley lifts the pan from the stove and swirls the butter around so it covers the entire surface. “There,” she says, and moves to work on her oatmeal. “What’d you do instead?” she asks, stirring milk into her bowl.

“I went to Target.”

When people want to escape from their responsibilities, some go to the movies, maybe others binge watch One Tree Hill. Others eat their favorite candy. Me? I go to Target, and step into a stereotype that fits as well as my favorite pair of jeans. My butt looks fantastic in this stereotype, and in December, when Starbucks brings out its Christmas Blend, and the cups turn red, I cannot resist that ridiculous bullseye.

Since we’ve moved to Ann Arbor, I don’t go to Starbucks anymore because there are too many shops that do it better, except for in December when I want to drink coffee from a red cup and walk around Target and escape into the land of treasures in dollar bins, Xhiliration undergarments and ten dollar Mossimo t-shirts.

What I could’ve and should’ve done was write and workout. Lately though, I’ve been feeling a little caged, a little claustrophobic. Too many to-dos. Too many expectations. Too much room for improvement. It’s making me feel belligerent, so off to Target I went.

“Butter’s sizzling,” Hadley tells me.

“Alright,” I say, moving towards the stove. The two of us are hip to hip; she is almost as tall as me. How many mornings have we shared, just Hadley and I? How many mornings did she sit in the high chair in our alley kitchen, gnawing apple slices and bananas while watching me fix coffee for myself? What about the mornings when I’d carry her to the kitchen and set her down to walk where we’d kept the Tupperware she loved to play with, or the mornings she was sitting next to me without the booster seat, eating Cheerios and reading a Magic Treehouse book, or drawing comic strips. Now she’s sharing the stove with me, telling me the butter is sizzling while she fixes her own breakfast.

“Let me crack these cage free eggs,” I say in my “I’m pretending I’m on a cooking show” voice, lifting two from the carton.

“What does that mean, ‘Cage Free?'” Hadley asks.

“It means farmers don’t keep their chickens in a coop all the time,” I crack one egg. “Or at all, I think. I’m not really sure, but I think it means they let the chickens roam around.” I crack another egg and lift a spatula from the crock next to the stove.

“That seems nice,” Hadley says. “But what does that have to do with eggs?”

She opens a cupboard and lifts a jar of cinnamon to sprinkle into her oatmeal.

“Well,” I begin, “I think it makes a better egg.”

“Huh?”

“Think about it. How do you feel when you don’t get recess?”

“Miserable.”

I know this is true. Hadley lives and dies by recess.

“Exactly. And how would you feel if instead of recess, your teacher said, ‘From now on, you’ll work on long division.’?”

“Why would she do that?” Hadley’s getting upset now. You don’t talk in hypotheticals regarding recess and long division. I should’ve used a different example.

“My point is, you probably won’t produce anything worthwhile if you never get a break.”

Hadley stirs cinnamon; I flip the eggs, and pierce the yolk so it cooks through.

I step towards the kitchen window and survey the sun that’s fully up now. The sky is a pale but deepening blue, and the empty tree branches stand tall and stark against it. When Hadley was three, and she noticed the leafless trees one late in November morning, she raised her arms in the air, started to run, and declared as happy as can be, “The trees are ready for snow!” I can’t ever look at bare tree branches without thinking that they are now happy and reaching towards the sky to do its thing and drop flakes upon them; collecting icy treasures, no two alike.

“I do feel better after I run around,” Hadley says. “Like, I can think better.” She scoops oatmeal into a bowl and grabs a spoon. She brings her breakfast into the dining room and sets it on the table next to a spiral bound notebook that contains a comic strip series she’s been working on the last couple of months. It’s called, The Average Series. It’s fiction, but I can tell she’s using real life scenarios and observations she’s made. She’s working out events she doesn’t understand in these comic strips. She’s working on sarcasm versus snark, she’s balancing right and wrong, good and evil as she sketches eye rolls, smiles, cafeteria tables, and classroom whiteboards.

I wonder how she feels after she creates from something that she doesn’t understand completely. I hope she feels good. I hope she feels thankful she’s laid it down on paper. I hope she knows she can always walk away from it, and take a break; that it’ll be there when she gets back, refreshed and ready to see it again.

“I feel that way, too,” I say to Hadley, walking into the dining room with my breakfast to join her. “Which is why I’ll go for a run today.” I open my notebook, too, and take a look at what I’m doing with what I don’t understand.

Hadley and I sit in silence, looking at our stories, thinking about what could and should be done next, and looking for some seed that might bloom despite the hardening soil of December.