YaYaWOT, YoYoWOT, Pia, Bug, and Boy lived in a split-level house in the woods outside Vernonia. YoYoWOT left very early in the morning and would make the coffee before heading out. Each morning of my Vernonia weekends (which were off days as I worked on Saturdays) I got up and poured myself and YaYaWOT coffee, added Mocha Mix to both and two teaspoons of sugar to hers, and got in on YoYoWOT's side of the bed. Bug and Pia would have left for school, and Boy would eventually come downstairs also to watch Blue's Clues. YaYaWOT and I laid in bed, drank our coffee, and talked every morning before our day really began.
That is how I adopted her and her family, and how they adopted me. In November of the first year I knew them, Bug turned seven and plans were made to take her and some friends to Chuck E. Cheese for pizza and games. YaYaWOT and her mother, The Is, were going to chaperone the kids and I volunteered to go along at the end of my weekend. There was no power out at the house for three days leading up to Bug's birthday party (trees often fell on the power lines), so we spent the days in the family room near the wood stove playing Scrabble and Uno. Everywhere else in the house was very very cold, and I slept with a hat on.
When I got home I sent a postcard to YaYaWOT and The Is on which I'd drawn a picture of all of us in a handbasket, with a thought balloon over the three of us adults thinking, "Where are we going?" I joke about it by saying that Chuck E. Cheese isn't hell, but you can see it from there, and YaYaWOT and I laugh about it because it was fun: We didn't have to watch the kids and every so often they would drop by and report how many tickets they'd won. The pizza was so bad we didn't attempt the coffee and just drank Cokes, but Bug was really happy with her birthday party and that's what mattered.
I had no idea I would still know this family eleven years later. I didn't think I would, but now I can't imagine not knowing them into the fourth generation (the third having arrived). YaYaWOT and I became sisters that summer and I gained a lot of family that way: her husband, her kids (one of whom has a husband and child of her own now), her mother, her sister-in-law, and the other YaYas.
Rarely do members of the same family
grow up under the same roof.
~ Richard Bach, Illusions
1 comment:
I don't have such a special coffee moment to share, but I do like Silk brand creamer. It's supposed to be healthy because it's soy based, but somehow they worked a hint of that delicious Mocha Mix flavor into it. I think it possesses special fats, too. YAY!
Post a Comment