An aromatic feast. . .

The coffee roaster is cranking. I've lost count of how many pounds I've roasted this afternoon. Costa Rican San Marcos Tarrazu is the current darling. There are two pounds in the mail to a retreat center outside Greensboro, along with blueberry lemon and chocolate chip scones. Four loaves of a Rose Berenbaum's sandwich bread cool on the racks, one stuffed with pecans and cinnamon. They are all spoken for, headed in three different directions. Two pounds of coffee will go next door, to head out of town on Friday for a Thanksgiving week vacation at the coast. Around five, when I get up in the morning, I'll take the three loaves of oatmeal bread out of the refrigerator. They will rise and then get baked before I leave for the gym. Two pounds will travel with me tomorrow to my workout, a delivery which barters for extra exercise time. After my workout and before leaving for a women's dinner in Chapel Hill tomorrow night, a two and a half hour drive, I'll bake the chocolate chip scones for another order. The dry ingredients are measured and on the counter.
I will admit to feeling a little breathless. I don't mind a day like this one here and there, but I don't do well with too many in a row. I lose my perspective, somehow. I remember when all my days were like this, when I was working, and going to school and teaching and commuting and in the small crevices between, attempting to be wife, mother and friend. I remember feeling as though I was patching it together on all fronts, barely maintaining a facade, falling apart on the inside. Drinking wine to calm down, sometimes while studying, after getting home at 10 or 11. Getting up to multiple cups of tea and coffee, then diet sodas in the afternoons. All of that just in an attempt to keep all those balls in the air, each of which had some self-definition written on it, barely visible as I kept tossing one after the other up up and away.
These days I don't have all those external deadlines. I make the pressures myself. But the addiction, the high is the same. "Look how busy I am. Look how productive I am." And the obvious corollary: See how little present I am to life itself, how unaware of the beauty of this fleeting moment, which I will never ever be able to get back. . .
Husband John knows of these predilections. He has already called to make sure that I am still going to be able to go out to dinner with him tonight. He knows how many times I have plead fatigue or overwhelm. . .not this time. . .not this time. . .I'm learning, slowly. . .just two more pounds of coffee, another 40 minutes. . .just two more. . .