Eggs and toast

"I have been young, and now am old, yet I have not seen the righteous forsaken or their children begging bread." — Psalm 37:25

Tuesday morning and I am in the booth by the front window and Linda has already brought the coffee.

She did not ask. She has not asked in eleven years. She sees me walk through the door and the coffee is on the table by the time I sit down. Heavy white mug, cream on the side, which I stopped using three years ago but she still brings because Linda remembers what you used to want even after you stop wanting it, which is a kindness I have not told her I notice.

I ordered the eggs and toast. I always order the eggs and toast. The menu has other things on it and I have read them all and I order the eggs and toast because the eggs and toast are good and I do not need a reason beyond that.

The diner is quieter in August than it is the rest of the year. I do not know why this is. The heat, maybe. Or the fact that half the town is at the beach or the lake or wherever people go in the last weeks of summer. The counter had two men I did not recognize and an older woman reading the newspaper and the booth behind me was empty. Maggie's booth. My booth, now. I have stopped thinking of it as hers, which is something I did not expect to happen and am not sure how I feel about.

Through the plate glass I can see Main Street and the post office and the hardware store that is not my father's hardware store anymore but that I still call my father's hardware store in my head. The awning is different. The sign is different. The building is the same building and the sidewalk is the same sidewalk and I walked that sidewalk with my father's hand around mine when I was six years old and the sidewalk does not know the difference.

Linda refilled the coffee without asking. I ate the eggs and toast and I looked out the window and I did not think about anything in particular, which is the entire point of Tuesday morning. The point is the booth and the coffee and the eggs and the view of Main Street and the way the morning moves at the speed the morning wants to move at and nobody asks it to go faster.

I left the tip on the table the way I always do. I said goodbye to Linda and she said see you next week and I walked out into the August heat and drove home and the morning was good.

Lord, thank you for the ordinary mornings that do not need to be anything more than what they are.