Bringing Hope to the Park City through Direct Service Programs

nOURish BLOGPORT

Breakfast

Breakfast


By Chris Carbone


  It is a crisp Monday morning in early September. The blaring of a passing train is made more distant, somehow, by the recent change in the air. Like the numbing cool of a cough drop, the concentration of oxygen presents the imminent prospect of Autumn. Concentrating too, and lending itself to lapses in oxygen, are those clenched moments of anxiety felt by Maria Alvarado, a single mother here in Bridgeport. The sound of the train did not rob her of slumber. There is still a considerable number of minutes to pass before her alarm is due to go off. She has been laying here like this for some time. For while most are greeting this change in weather with anticipation for pumpkin spice lattes, apple picking, and nestling up with a scary book by dim light; the howling wind rattling against the window only a reminder that no threat can breach so cozy a cocoon, Maria is reminded that school is now back in session for her two small children. She is reminded that today is day number one of five more this week. That means five mornings where she is tasked with feeding them a breakfast hearty enough to sustain their minds through six hours of learning. 


  She drags herself out of bed. She shuffles into the kitchenette like some automaton charged by unseen forces. Her mind reduced to one single stream of cyclical consciousness dully ringing like some mantra worn down to the rotor: Breakfast…breakfast…What’ll it be? That’s all there is for the moment. 


  She opens the freezer to nothing but a pack of hash browns. That’s not enough, she thinks. 


  She opens her refrigerator to a carton with three eggs, a jar of pickle juice, and an apple. In the freezer, a mere pack of hashbrowns. This is barely enough to feed the boy alone. Okay…that will have to be okay…one step at a time. Then worry about the girl. 


  Opening the cupboard, she realizes there is no cooking oil. Dammnit! She searches high and low. No oil--olive, canola, or otherwise to speak of. The piercing silver of her SNAP card, at rest atop the small, circular dining table, catches her eye. She picks it up and sees that there has been a perfect rectangle where it was, made stark by the thin layer of dust across the rest of the table’s surface. More stark is the reminder that she hasn’t used it in two weeks because she can’t. This is not the typical mid-month panic for those who have to swipe this kind of card at the grocery store, where balances zero out and food pantry attendances increase. The first of the month doesn’t ring the sort of relieving dinner bell that it used to. SNAP is right…it’s like they expect us to open the fridge and just go, ‘oh, snap! Better just make do with three eggs and nothing to cook them with. She goes and peeks into the girl’s room. She is still asleep. Same with the boy. Good. Buy me some time. I’ll find something. I don’t know where, but they will have breakfast. They will eat well. 


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   Maria takes to the sidewalk. She passes several bodegas, but does not slow down for any of them. Junk is all they’ve got there. Even if this damn card had money on it, Twinkies and breakfast bars will not nourish my family…I won’t have it. She continues on. Traffic mounting up. Horns blaring. This all matching her interior state, with the frenzy of half-baked solutions swarming her mind. The crow of a rooster is not an uncommon sound in her neighborhood. She figures if she keeps walking, she may hear one. Where there is a rooster, there will be chickens…I can barter…I’ll knock on doors, ask to borrow some butter…There’s got to be a good neighbor around here. 


  She turns a corner and passes her local food pantry. She has heard about this place, and has come once or twice before. They usually just have canned goods--some fruits and veggies on a good day. But she stops in her tracks when she sees a woman exiting the building with a carton of eggs in her hand. What’s this now? She heads on in, with a bit of caution, though. This must be a mistake. She begins to feel as if her single-minded quest for a home-cooked breakfast for her children (God forbid) is making her delusional. There have never been eggs here before. Am I just seeing what I want to see? 


  Once the line brings her inside, she realizes it isn’t some mirage in a food desert. There is a tall, see-through refrigerator that is stacked to the brink with eggs. And not just any old eggs. They are from a local farm right here in the same county. Their transit from the source made that much shorter. Their potential to be damaged or expired--the spectre of loss of nutritional value mitigated by the simple stamp of “farm-fresh.” And what is this? She says to herself as she turns and spots, diagonal from the fridge, a shelf loaded with vegetable oil. The sun casts rays down and through the windows and almost directly onto the bottles, making their contents more visible to the naked eye, and like some golden base to culinary possibility--hence, to a more nourished tomorrow. 


  She leaves carrying a bag in silence. Too embarrassed to be emotional about receiving a simple carton of eggs and a bottle of vegetable oil. It is bound to happen when those bare essentials one was barred from are once again within their reach. Today…for a few days, at least, we will have breakfast.

Chris Carbone