Saltines

It’s the morning following my 36^th birthday and I arise not feeling hungover. I shuffle about wiping sleep from my eyes and go about my business, coffee in hand. With one child off on his daily Kindergarten adventure and the husband well on his way to work, I retreat to bed with a book in hand where I cocoon myself next to my snoozing toddler. 

My mind feels clear enough but my stomach flops inside of me confirming that I may have had too much to drink the evening before. But really, define “too much.” Sometimes hardly anything at all, often times just two glasses of wine do me in but my birthday splurge of 5 or 6 drinks are now behind me and I feel dandy save for my insides who are doing their best to contest my general sense of wellbeing. 

I fetch a sleeve of saltines to pair with my freshly brewed coffee. Black, dark and bitter sips hyphenated by oddly satisfying nibbles of the crackers. I wonder why it is I find so much comfort in this treat and I’m reminded that my parents would tell me that saltines were cookies in my youth. My image of this common sweet treat imbibed by other children and puppeteered monsters was dry, plain and salty. I wonder now if this childhood deception is the root of all of my problems.

Could my warped sense of romantic bliss and parental affections have all begun with my love of the saltine cracker misidentified as a cookie?

My love is like a saltine.

Parched and briny.