idylling in dim light

In the Beginning: making coffee and toast before dawn, I try to move silently as my wife and baby daughter sleep in the next room. I measure out four heaping tablespoons of coffee into a cone and wait for the pot to whistle. Outside, a surfer in a wetsuit pads down the street toward the cold water, his board balanced on his head. His eyes, I imagine, begin to glow.

The window grows brighter, and I want to watch the sun crack above Moss Landing across the bay. So it's time to speed it up--spreading marmalade, tucking a midget pair of mittens into my back pocket, wrestling the fancy stroller out of the laundry room.

My wife lays tumbled across our bed, her long legs sneaking across the border onto my side. Her hair curls wild about her head and pillow, and I fight the tractor-beam pull to get back in, to forget the long walk. Forget everything. But there's Tavi, all three months of her asleep in her low crib pushed against the bed. The air whispering through her lips a kind of song to her parents.

The top of her head smells like soy sauce and honey. I bend and lift her up and out, cradling her head in my hand as a gaurd against my clumsiness. And soon she is tucked and strapped and almost disappeared and grunting a bit under blankets in her stroller, her head wrapped in a thick white fleece hat. Coffee, phone, ipod, sunglasses, and a cold piece of toast balanced on a paper towel. Tavi's awake now and watches me, serene yet expectant, through a clear plastic window in the stroller, as I navigate us out of the backyard and to the street.