First off, let me thank Summer at The Circus Comes To Town, seen here http://thecircushascometotown.blogspot.com/ , for the prestigious award she felt compelled to bestow upon me.

I’ve never won anything on the internet really, so this was nice. Apparently she thinks I’m witty and caustic enough to bring sunshine to her day. Thanks, Summer. I’ll try to live up to it.

As a kid, my parents would ship me off to my Grandmother’s house for about a month every summer. I imagined it was so they could have crazy, Eyes Wide Shut style orgies while I was away. I mean, who wants a kid running into the room asking for more hamburger helper while their mom is getting plowed by eight or more dudes in masks?

Anyway, during these times I would wake up about six or seven in the morning, and I knew she was already awake. I could smell her cheap cigarettes, and black coffee wafting down the hallway. It’s probably my second favorite smell, now that I think about it. I would plod down the hallway, and sit down at the table. She in turn, would look over at me, smile and ask what I wanted for breakfast. Almost always the answer was toast and juice. No one makes toast like my Grandmother used to. 

After eating, I would head outside to sit on her porch swing. There, I would swing, listen to the birds, and smell the morning dew. This is very possibly my first favorite smell. These mornings were the best I’ve ever had. Everything was perfect. I’d likely ride my bike at this point to the playground where I would hang around for a couple of hours, and then I would ride back to my grandmother’s house. 

Still smoking and drinking coffee, she would ask what was for lunch, and I would invariably say, “Blue Soup”. At that point, we would both take points in the kitchen, grabbing anything we could off the shelves. My grandmother would fill a pot on the stove, and in would go any ingredients we could get our hands on. We called it Blue Soup, because for some reason, I would always dump blue food coloring into it. This gave the soup a rather strangely appealing deep blue color. I never really knew what all went into the blue soup, but it always tasted good. I’d like to think my grandmother would keep the items closest to me acceptable for random soup making. 

After Blue Soup, we would sit at the table. The wind would be pushing her gauzy curtains back and forth, and the smell of black coffee and cigarettes would still linger. Neither of us would ever say a word during those times. We didn’t have to. It was quiet, peaceful, and perfect.

I never liked it at the end of summer when my parents would come to get me. Back there, I was just a weird little friendless boy. At my grandmother’s house though, I was a master chef, and the creator of Blue Soup who enjoyed his quiet, dew filled mornings, and the smell of black coffee and cigarettes.