Sugar Pike Junction

We needed an escape from the Middle Eastern images that were flashing on the television screen this morning--they filled me with some unknown trepidation and a semi-detached nervousness that I can't seem to shake. It felt to me like the entire world is going crazy around us, and I am powerless to help to reverse all the anger and damage. My toddler plays on, unaware. I'm sure there were things like this going on when I was his age that I don't remember, and I'm sure my parents must have been concerned like I am now.

I switched the TV off, and my husband suggested we go out for breakfast. Going out for breakfast--what a lovely sounding concept to me. Anyone can go out to lunch or dinner, but we were GOING OUT FOR BREAKFAST. And on a weekday, no less.

We drove to the little sandwich shop in the country that I had tried for the first time yesterday. Quaint. Friendly. Pastoral setting. Ralph Waldo Emerson quotes on the dry erase board. Just what I needed. We ordered three bacon, egg, and cheese biscuits, and sat under the shade trees outside at one of the picnic tables. My son was sedately enamored of all the trucks passing by toward their important work for the day. After we finished breakfast, I went back in to thank the owner for a wonderful breakfast, and we talked for a little while about what made that particular spot so special. I told him how impressed I was by the range of his clientele, and he agreed. He said that on any given day, one could find real-estate millionaires sitting at "a common table" with workmen, eating breakfast or lunch, and for that part of their day, "one man was no better than the other."

We then drove more around the countryside to drink in with our eyes the spectacle of the horses, cows, and farmhouses that still fills us with a palpable hope of some kind of "simpler life." We stopped by a grocery store, and I picked up some flowers for our own tables at home--some pink gladiolas for my dresser, some orange alstromerias for my kitchen table, and yellow roses for a yet-to-be-determined destination.

The grim news was still on when we returned home, and I thought, if only I could place my yellow roses on a "common table" somewhere in the world, invite all the angy people to breakfast, and let them have a day of calm away from their problems, then tomorrow they might release their captives and be less inclined to blow things up. I know that it's more complicated than that, but as I watch bombs hitting targets on the screen before me, I certainly wish it didn't have to be.