Morning Ritual

Shelly Jones

Hoke, Shawn. Morning Ritual. Flickr.

We sit on the couch, a cat sprawled out between us, having kneaded her way sufficiently into the mountain of blankets. He sits, feet up on the coffee table, laptop perched on his legs. By his silence and the occasional keystroke, I know what he is doing: his mind a flurry of activity as he fills in the blank spaces of the New York Times crossword puzzle. He has done this every morning for the last 967 mornings. He charts his completion time, gets annoyed when a Thursday puzzle takes him longer than it should. A bad time will set his jaw askew, his mind ruminating on the question that tripped him up: a French word crossing an obscure river in Russia. Sometimes, if he is struggling, if the chance to beat his best time has long vanished, he will ask me a question he thinks I’ll know the answer to, usually regarding mythology or an old movie reference.

“Dorothy of road pictures?”

“Lamour,” I answer, and begin humming the theme song from Road to Morocco, wincing now at the inherent, casual racism in the once beloved Crosby and Hope film.

As he fills in the black and white grid, I sit with my knees tucked up into my chest, my phone inches from my still-bleary eyes. I click on the Duolingo app and begin my 699th day of German instruction. Refreshing a lesson on the future tense, I feel the promise of possibility in each exercise: Ich werde das Buch lesen; was werden wir machen?. I sip my black coffee, hot and bitter on my sleeping tongue, and pet the purring cat at my side, now curled up into a half-moon shape of fur. His computer sings its familiar flourish, a ditty of completion as he finishes his puzzle, closes the laptop.

“What a good cat,” he says admiringly.

“The best cat,” I confirm, finishing the lesson for the day, German words clinging to my mind like the cathair strewn across the blanket, the couch, my sweater.  

He downs the rest of his cold coffee, sets the cup in the sink, and heads upstairs to shower before work. I pour myself more coffee, cross off “Duolingo” on my to-do list, and move on to the next item feeling content, ready to tackle it all.   

Shelly Jones, PhD (she/her/hers) is an Associate Professor of English at SUNY Delhi, where she teaches classes in mythology, folklore, and writing. Her speculative work has previously appeared in Podcastle, New Myths, The Future Fire, and elsewhere. @shellyjansen