3. The last good morning.

I’ve always been a little long-winded, so I’ll try to keep these posts brief and to the point. Short and sweet, if possible. It’s a hazard in the teaching profession to drone on and on. Bueller. Bueller.

I awoke to the smell of bacon. Lord knows I loves me some bacon! It was enough of a normal event that I wondered if I had dreamt the events of the previous evening. I tried to open my eyes enough to see without bringing in so much light that I couldn’t doze off again. The two girls were still next to me, the cats were on the bed, splayed out and enjoying a beam of sunlight. Maybe I had been dreaming. I yawned and stretched, and sat up.

The windows were still boarded up.

Shite.

So much for the dream, but the nightmare seemed to be well on it's way.

I got up and tried not to wake the kids. I slipped on my clothes and went to the kitchen. Pam was frying bacon like it was going out of style. There was a full pan frying and two other plates full of cooked pork strips draining on paper towels! The radio was on low and some non-descript pop-rock song was playing, Nicklebland, or Matchhead 182 or something I refuse to acknowledge as quality music.

“Whoa hon, you know I love bacon, but there is a limit!” I remember saying in jest. I knew there was a method to her madness, but I couldn’t figure it out immediately.

She said “I want to make sure this all gets cooked before we lose power. I’m not getting trichinosis from eating raw bacon. Plus I don’t want to waste anything.” I wrapped my arms around her from behind and squeezed and kissed her neck. I held her like that for as long as she’d let me, which was about 25 seconds.

“Okay, I’ve got hot grease here, let me finish.” She turned and planted a wet one on my lips and I reciprocated. When we finished our kiss, she asked if I could put a couple of bagels in the toaster, which I did. We went about a normal breakfast routine. Eventually the girls tumbled out of bed and into the kitchen.

We had a fantastic meal together. We sang “Johnny Appleseed” and dug into the bounty of beautiful breakfast before us. We had scrambled eggs with cheese and bacon; we had bagel-egg-cheese-bacon sandwiches; soft flour tortillas wrapped around eggs, bacon and cheese! We had warm, sweet, buttery grits with bacon-bits sprinkled in, and of course, strips of bacon. All washed down with cold milk. It was one of the best meals ever.

No matter what happened after, I knew we had spent one of the most important moments of our lives together as a family. I made a silent vow then and there that we would have another moment like this again. I swore on my life, I swore on their lives, and I swore on everything I hold sacred. This was not “The End.” Only the beginning of something different.

The rest of the morning was spent packing. Pam started to clean up, and I stopped her. She looked into my eyes with a questioning gaze. I furrowed my brow and shrugged. “Leave it. We’ll get it later.”

We went to the bedroom and packed what clothes we could fit into two smallish rolling suitcases. I rummaged through the garage to find anything that might be useful and packed it into the rear of the Town & Country. Water jugs (1 empty and 3 full) anti-freeze/coolant, tire pump, an old section of carpet, jumper cables, the smaller of the tool boxes, a rubber mallet, the sleeping bags and a small hatchet. The girls busied themselves with getting their portable DVD player, movies and Nintendo stuff packed up and tended to the cats. It would be the first time both Angel and Nugget would have to travel together in one cat-carrier, but we’d make it work.

After everything was packed, I stood in the kitchen looking out of the top, uncovered portion of the sliding glass doors. The field behind the house was still. The skiff of snow from the last blast was melting in the morning light. I sipped on my Coke Zero and thought about the past. I didn’t dwell there, just lingered long enough to enjoy what we had.

More importantly I wanted to focus on what was about to come. I wanted to mentally prepare for things I didn’t want to do, but knew in my heart would be necessary. One of the many deer we share the field with wandered out of the tree line, ate some grass and looked right at me. I waved.

Then the power went out.