Up or not to expectation

As far as breakfast was concerned, I might as well have died during the night, after all.
    Last night I'd set out on the kitchen counter to thaw a Ziploc freezer bag of two of the croissants we'd bought at Costco the day before, and the small bowl (of the set of four we'd bought used in San Rafael when our son was a year old) in which I would stir two eggs the next morning for scrambling.
    I set the small skillet on the stove, put out a large plate and a knife and a fork, got down the French press and two coffee cups, and the jar of Tupelo honey and a spoon to ladle it out onto the croissants after I heated them in our new Cuisinart oven. I remember almost saying out loud as I left the kitchen on my way to the bedroom, Let me survive the night to be able to enjoy breakfast. Hope atavistically expressed, a moment of magical thinking? Or just a way of thinking (almost aloud)?
    But breakfast wasn't that enjoyable. Scrambled eggs just aren't as special to me anymore as they used to be. I think I'd have enjoyed more a large bowl of my more usual 5-minute oatmeal, with a handful of thawed-out Nature's Three Berries from Costco (raspberries, blueberries, and marionberries) and sweetened with a little brown sugar. And only a single croissant. The same French-pressed coffee, though. It's always good.
    Nevertheless, I'm glad I survived the night. Breakfast wasn't bad, just not as glorious as I'd imagined. And I don't think any breakfast could be bad enough to have died overnight to avoid.

And if I'd died, I wouldn't have gone on the walk with Siegfried and my wife his mama, or met the photographer who marveled at Siegfried and asked was the 1992 Volvo in the parking lot ours. He said he had a Volvo 240 also. "A 1981, four hundred and ten thousand miles on it, been to 40 states." We asked would we see it when we left. No, he'd driven his 1988 Pontiac Fiero. "It's a poor man's Porsche. Thirty-four miles per gallon."
    I asked about his last name, told him an old friend named that had retired back to Montgomery, Alabama from IBM. "He could be a distant relation," he said, "maybe as far back as when my people were Vikings and went over to Scotland from Normandy."
    I didn't tell him that the other fellow had been found dead in his home only a year or three after his homecoming, by a neighbor, I think. Apparent heart attack. More than twenty years ago....

And I wouldn't have been there along the trail when my wife discovered the beautiful fungus (?) on a little tree I now see I guessed wrong might become a Sweetgum.

Another good day to have survived the night for.