Ever since the Country Boy has started working, our routine has changed.
It’s surprising how quickly I’ve gotten used to the new rhythm of things. TCB works outside of Paris and has the use of a company car to get there and back. Because he’s impossibly sweet, every afternoon around 5pm, I get a text asking if I want to be picked up from work, a text I usually have to reply to in the negative, because I’ve been working 13-hour days as of late. The morning is where the real change surfaces.
In the past, even when TCB was working, he would get up far earlier than I would, go about his morning in quiet darkness. I would hear the tell-tale signs of the progression of his routine from a state of half-sleep: the shower running, BFN quietly parsing the news, the microwave heating his cup of coffee but never dinging, because he would stop it just in time.
But since his new job has coincided with the novelty of my full-time employment, things have changed. He leaves the house at 7:30, and while I don’t technically have to be at work until 9, I’ve taken to rising with him and getting to work an hour early, content in the comfort of riding in the passenger seat as opposed to fighting for a seat on the tram, working for an hour in relative silence as the cleaning lady finishes her last sweep of the upstairs before the rest of my co-workers arrive.
The boy and I don’t talk in the morning — we just exist. I make the coffee and toast with apple butter. There are two jars, because I like apples and cinnamon, and TCB thinks that cinnamon tastes like death. I take a bite of mine before wandering into the bedroom to pick out my clothes for the morning, so that he doesn’t get confused about whose is whose. His yellow mug gets two sugars and a splash of milk; I leave it on the counter and he comes to get it when he’s ready. Sometimes, if there’s time, I take a look at my e-mails, gauging the work to be done once I arrive at the office. Occasionally, I see something interesting to talk to him about on a news site or via Facebook, but I always save it for the car.
I’ve been a morning person for a long time. I’d venture to say I was a morning person even when I was sleeping til noon in high school; my morning was just displaced. My brain is sharpest just after rising, and while I need a good five minutes to silently caffeinate, I’m good to go after.
TCB is not a morning person. I never forget this fact for long.
But as soon as we get into the car, everything changes. Together, we witness the early morning Paris sunrise. We talk about the songs on the radio, de tout et de rien, as he so frequently likes to say. About everything and nothing. About past and present. About anything save the concrete of work, which we save for the afternoons and evenings. Mornings are full of promise; maybe that’s why I like them so much.
White and Green Bean Salad (serves 2)
2 cups canned white beans
1/2 cup frozen or fresh green beans
2 Tbsp. pesto
5 basil leaves
freshly cracked black pepper
Drain the white beans and rinse them. Heat a pot of salted water and blanch the green beans. Drain them and add the white beans to the still-hot pot.
Cut the green beans in half and add them back to the pot, along with the pesto and a healthy dose of black pepper.
