We Rose at Dawn

We rose at dawn. Actually, it was more like 9:30. But dawn sounds more dramatic. Damn. I’m already off to an inaccurate start. Let me start over.

We rose at 9:30. AM. Shoot. That doesn’t work.

We rose earlier than in days past. Eager. Anticipating. Yeah, that’s it. That works.

With everyone up and ready, however, we realized 9:30 was way too early. We could’ve waited until 11 AM or so. But where’s the drama in 11? I mean, that’s like brunch time on Sundays. Brunch is not dramatic.

I’ve really messed things up here, haven’t I? This is not how I wanted to start this. In fact, this is pretty much the opposite of how I wanted to start this. I wanted danger. I wanted excitement. I wanted intrigue. Now, it seems, all I have is brunch. Where the hell did I go wrong?

Screw it.

We rose at dawn. Eager. Anticipating. Our senses sharp. Our focus keen. Before us lay a mission. A dangerous mission. An exciting mission. An intriguing mission. We were the select few. Plucked from our everyday lives to participate in, nay, to helm this amazing endeavor.

Okay, I’m lying. I have totally derailed here.

My mom wanted me to go to the grocery store for some yams.

There you have it. In all its glory. No danger. No excitement. No intrigue. Just some candied yams that she forgot to buy when she had gone to the store the previous day to stock up for our traditional Thanksgiving Day feast.

So now I was called into service on this brisk Thursday morning. The sounds of pots and pans clanging and crashing filled the air as the smell of roasting turkey enveloped the house. No one really ever ate the turkey. It was there for Mama Jenkins. Mama Jenkins wanted turkey.

“You eat turkey on Thanksgiving,” she’d say. “You don’t eat ham.”

The rest of us ate ham.

Honey-baked ham. With crisp, crunchy, brown-sugary edges. Oh, those glorious ham edges. Edges that, if I may be honest, have always fooled me into thinking that I enjoy honey-baked ham more than I actually do. I mean, the meat’s good. Don’t get me wrong. But I’ve always put honey-baked ham up on some misbegotten culinary pedestal as the prime example of what my tummy craves when it comes to big dinners. But I think it’s those edges that clouded my vision all these years. I admit today, for the first time, that honey-baked ham is not the end-all, be-all food dish that I have always claimed it be.

It feels good to get that off my chest.

I’m really off track now. Yams is the direction I wanted to go with this. But alas, I’m careening into diatribes on honey-baked ham, for God sake.

Onto to the yams…