Morning With Rita

It’s early in the morning in my Aunt Rita’s kitchen. In my family we pronounce it “ant,” not “awnt”. Rita and I are at her table, the room is lit by a circular fluorescent light, cool, bluer than I am used to. And is the decor blue and green? Wallpaper, maybe? I can’t remember. I can’t remember when this was, either, except that it must have been after my parent’s divorce, which means I was at least 9 or 10. I conflate it with another visit, years later, when my father, brother, and I were there to celebrate my father’s 50th birthday. I was 17 that year, not much after the earlier memory by the standards of middle age but a lifetime later from the vantage of being 10 or 17.

I’m sitting with my aunt Rita at her kitchen table. The overhead light, circular, fluorescent, is dimmer and cooler than I am used to. In that room that morning, the light has volume the way water does and everything feels isolated, discrete, yet retains its vividness. Now I remember: we’re drinking coffee, or she’s drinking coffee, and we’re talking about cigarettes which I smoke at that time and maybe just did prior to this meeting but definitely at the time. She hasn’t smoked in many years and is gently prodding me to think about quitting. Not to quit but just to think about it.

Don’t I get tired of it, she asks? Doesn’t it make me feel bad? I tell her no and I don’t know. She asks me if I know what she hated most about it and I say of course not and we laugh. Of course not, she says. What I hated most was always having to make sure I had them with me, that every time I left the room or the house, I had to make sure I had them with me. It used to drive me crazy, such a crazy thing to worry about. Don’t you worry about that? I tell her I don’t, that I always have them with me, and if I do forget them or run out, I just buy more. She smiles. Of course you do, she says.