They bloomed for thirty-eight years.
And every morning, Harold drank tea on the porch.
Not coffee. Tea. Earl Grey. With honey and a splash of milk. In a blue mug I bought him at a craft fair in Tubac in 1986. He sat in the same wooden rocker he built himself. He drank one cup before he left for school.
On weekends, he drank two.
The second cup was the important one.
He told me that once. Early on. A Saturday. I asked him why he always made a second cup on weekends when he only drank one on weekdays.
“The first cup,” he said, “is for waking up.”
“And the second?”
He looked at me over the rim of the blue mug.
“The second cup is for staying,” he said. “It’s for when you’re not in a hurry to be anywhere else. When the place you are is the place you want to be.”
He made a sign.
That week. In his garage workshop. Out of a piece of mesquite. He wood-burned the letters himself. He hung it on the porch, right above the rocker.
EVERY HOUSE NEEDS A PORCH FOR THE SECOND CUP.
It hung there for thirty-seven years.
Daniel grew up under it.
Daniel was born in 1987.
Our only child. We tried for more. It didn’t happen.
He was a sweet boy. Serious. Curious. He’d sit on the porch steps next to Harold’s rocker on Saturday mornings with a juice box while Harold drank his second cup. He’d ask questions about everything. Why is the sky blue. Why do roses have thorns. Why does Daddy drink two cups on Saturday.
Harold would point at the sign.
“Read it, Danny,” he’d say.
And Daniel would sound it out. Slowly. Six years old.
Ev-er-y house needs a porch for the sec-ond cup.
