Summer Breakfast

Choose your mug wisely

Imagine a family summer home. Let’s say it was built several generations ago, during a particular sweet spot of New England life when not everyone had to farm, and people made the effort to distinguish between seasons of daily grind and the season for recreation. The home is on a body of water, either a lake or the ocean. When guests are invited to visit “the cottage,” it refers to the building’s lack of insulation and not its relative size. Countless twin beds are arrayed under countless wood-paneled dormer ceilings.

Dishes are shelved within the walls of the dining room, revealed by turning an iron latch to swing open a section of wall. Shallow ledges hold a mismatched collection of china from long-past decades. These are the remnants of dinnerware sets—Wedgwood, Spode, Royal Doulton—that found their way to the cottage after bowls cracked or patterns were retired following a death or marriage. An occasional melamine dish, perhaps with a pattern of faded Peter Rabbits, nods to later generations of overtired young mothers, potty training their toddlers under the observant eyes of mothers-in-law. Nobody discards cottage dishes unless they break: they simply amass until shelves hit capacity. One salutes the memory of a great-grand-aunt while choosing a dish for a tomato and mayonnaise sandwich.

Breakfast at a summer home is the only opportunity for an introverted meal. Everyone rolls out of bed on their own schedule. There is special dispensation for sleeping in, and no judgment for being the last one down (maybe self-satisfaction from the early bird who saw the sunrise, but no judgment). One can silently nurse a mug of coffee from a corner of the deck, or morosely chew an English muffin at the dining table while regretting last night’s G&T. Lunchtime will be more social by design (kids’ meals! shared chicken salad! a picnic packed for the beach!) but breakfast respects each individual’s different rate of adjustment to communal living.

A coffee mug can indicate personal approach to morning. A thin-walled mug sporting a jaunty pun may mean the drinker is open to breakfast conversation from the get-go. A large earthenware vat with brown glaze may signal a warning for others to bide their time before approach. Mugs are less likely to be part of the porcelain dinner sets; they are discards from the home office or past Father’s Day presents. They are found in the shabbily practical kitchen cabinet, smashed together on a shelf under a Tupperware container of sugar and single-serving cereal boxes (always, ALWAYS, the corn flakes are the last to be eaten).

Each resident gravitates to a particular mug. The first morning it takes some time to review options—shape, capacity, design—before selecting one to suit the need. The next morning there’s the briefest of hesitations before choosing the same mug again. By days three and four, there’s no thought involved at all. One simply grabs one’s own mug. If it’s not there (perhaps a cousin’s girlfriend came to stay and used it with oblivious disregard) there’s at first confusion, then resentment, and finally a silently hostile selection of a different mug. The girlfriend has an uphill road to gain acceptance from this first misstep.

Breakfast is for passively building sense memories. Early risers get the best view: the wicker chair by the bay window; the stone step by the cove. Late risers get different views, and they become entrenched in memory too: the red Formica top of the breakfast counter; coffee bubbling through the hourglass shape of the ancient Chemex maker. The sounds reach every seat (if not birdsong, then boat engines or waves). It is a slow awakening to the possibility of the day. By the time the mug is washed in the old enamelware sink and back in the cupboard, communal living is firmly underway. The day has begun.