Early mornings in winter, tenth grade. No breakfast brings out the cold from within. Wearing a uniform skirt to school in the snow. Always the first one in homeroom, I turn on the heat for the little portable classroom. The room won't be warm for awhile, so I sit on the heater and sip the $0.75 coffee from the convenience store down the street.

"You know, everyday I get out of bed and drag myself to the next cup of coffee. I take a sip and the caffeine kicks in. I can focus my eyes again. My brain starts to order the day. I'm up, I'm alive. I'm ready to rock. But the time is coming when I wake up and decide that I'm not getting out of bed. Not for coffee, or food or sex. If it comes to me, fine. If it won't, fine. No more expectations. The longer I live, the less I know. I should know more. I should know the coffee's killing me. You're suspicious of your suspicions? I'm jealous. I'm so jealous. You still have the heart to have doubts.

"Me? I'm going to lock up a 14 year old kid for what could be the rest of his natural life. I got to do this. This is my job. This is the deal. This is the law. This is my day. I have no doubts or suspicions about it. Heart has nothing to do with it anymore. It's all in the caffeine."

The day starts at five-thirty am: the doctors need the inital diagnoses out by 10am. Our slides have to be in their boxes by eight.

The hospital is quiet this early. Very few people are in the cafeteria when I stop there to pick up a tall cup full of some fancy Kenyan brand of coffee. Too hot to drink, I start on the day's work without the caffeine.

Sometime around six-thirty, the sun begins to rise. Marilyn always noticed first. In her crinkly plastic apron, she would waddle off to the break room to get her coffee and a few of us would follow behind.

The view from the seventh floor was breathtaking, if you could look far enough past the slums of East Baltimore to the harbor where the tall ships and cranes were visible to the south. We could see the sunrise around the building to the east. Spectacular, to everyday pause and breathe in the beauty of the dawn and wake to the day with the heavenly scent of coffee mingling with the light smells of xylene and formalin that pervaded the lab.

:~:

In France, we walk all day, spend the evenings exploring new towns and collapse into bed around midnight if we're lucky. The next day, up early to get a head start on the next area we'll be touring. The coffee is strong, bitter and impossible to turn sweet. After one cup I am jazzed up and ready to face the day.

:~:

It's my first week of college and I'm learning how to make the proper strength distillation of coffee. The familiar coffee-smell fills the small room and brings back thoughts of days past.