I felt every bit of Florene’s anxiousness just by watching her run back and forth from the kitchen to the bedroom in an attempt to prepare breakfast that consisted of fried potatoes, sausage, bacon, eggs, toast and grits all while attending my first wedding; the wedding of Prince Charles and Lady Diana. I sat with my legs folded in Bishop’s burgundy over stuffed recliner that swallowed me but at the same time gave me warmth every time I sat in it. Florene was superwoman, she’d come in the room with a knife in one hand and a bag of potatoes in the other asking me if she’d missed anything; and after taking a glimpse at the television herself, it took her breath away. I knew this by the way she covered her chest with the hand that held the knife as she said, “My goodness look at all those people.”
We both watched with excitement as the television captured everything in its true bright and colorful form. The red carpet was truly red, not a blurred brownish red. There were big beautiful hats and small ones too, people were dressed in lavenders, blues, greens, corals, and pinks; the audience was truly a human floral garden. Florene and I were the only ones out of dress, I barefooted in my mixed matched pajama set, Florene too in her pajamas a pink satin night gown covered with Bishops oversized black terrycloth robe that stopped just above her ankles but matched her black terrycloth slippers.
In all my six years I had never known of anything having Florene’s attention as much as the wedding did; and even still Florene was determined to have breakfast ready for Bishop whenever he did decide to come home. Bishop would work an eight hour shift and often pulled another four sometimes more hours after work, at the liquor store hanging out. He practiced it for weeks and by month’s end he’d already mastered it; but it would be years before Florene finally got up enough nerve to question him about it.
On any given day of the week Bishop’s breakfast would still occupy space by mid- afternoon in the oven because he either wasn’t hungry or had come in and passed out from his drunkenness. When the time came for Florene to start cooking dinner she never seemed to mind that throughout the day all us children had taken turns eating off Bishops breakfast plate, nibbling off the sausage and bacon; or making a sandwich altogether using the scrambled or fried eggs and pre buttered toast which by then had become stale, but it didn’t matter because the apple butter or grape jelly always overpowered the staleness.