Pancakes in the Morning

Pancakes in the Morning


It’s strange when one random occurrence can change your life completely. It can also be the most beautiful experience for a person like me to have. My name is Sam. Samuel Marshall Peters IV, if you want to get technical. I was 30 years old when my life got turned upside down (in a good way – like pancakes in the morning good). It’s been a year since that day and even though we never got our “Oh-Gee-Gosh” moment, Polly and I will always have the first moment – the one that makes all the rest matter. The moment we first met.
* * * * * * * * *

July 8
My birthday. The day I took my very first real breath, the day, fifteen years later, I first had sex with a girl, and, fifteen years after that, the day I learned what my life was all about. I love birthdays. Not just mine, other people’s too, but, okay, mostly I love my birthdays. All my friends buy me a drink to celebrate my twenty-first year, and they all pitch in to buy me “Inga, the Inflatable Intern” for my thirtieth. Sure she’s cute, but she’s a little empty-headed. Inga, however, soon became my best friend as I carried her home from Rocko’s house that night, tucked safely under my arm.
“Look Inga – a quarter!” I say in a loud, drunken slur.
“Ouch.” As I turn and bend over to claim my new fortune, Inga speaks to me through plastic lips, “That hurt.”
“Inga!” I exclaim, throwing her into the air and catching her by the left breast as she falls back down. “You are a real girl!” Laughter follows this statement and as I turn to point out to the culprit that my lady friend and I were having a private conversation, my eyes, in their current state of blurry brown, read the words, “I’ve lost my dignity – can you check under my shirt for it?” This, printed across a chest the non-plastic equivalent of Inga’s.
“I don’t think she talks much.” Said the breasts, smiling up at me through a low-cut V-neck. “Looks like she’s just full of hot air.”
I placed both hands securely over Inga’s ears as I gasped, “How dare you make fun of Inga simply because she’s different from you an I?”
“Sorry Mister, I didn’t mean any disrespect for your plastic lover.” The breasts replied.
“All right.” I said, easily appeased due to the number of breasts currently in my line of sight. “Now, what are your names?” They jiggle as they laugh – I like that.
“My name is Polly, and my face is up here.” The reply is followed by a gentle hand guiding my face up to a pair of beautiful emerald-green eyes and I melt, my heart dripping puddles of promises and love at my feet.
“Polly.” It’s all I can manage to say. Just one simple word that makes me wonder what this world would be without inflatable dolls and pancakes. Whispered from my mouth and sent on the wind, I watch the word float up to the clouds realizing then that I am now lying on my back in the grass. Polly is kneeling beside me now, on this day one year ago, smiling and telling me she’s glad I’m okay.
“I’m glad you’re okay.” She says. “What’s your name?”
“Sam.”
* * * * * * * * *

As I sit and write this story, I realize what kind of first impression I must have made on Polly. Apart from nearly poking her eye out with the finger of an inflatable doll, puking on her shoes and passing out immediately afterward, I must have come across as a complete jackass. Polly, however, never complained that night as we talked our way through to morning.
“How are you feeling?” She asked, neatly folding a deflated Inga into a more manageable package.
“Much better. Hungry though.” I replied. “Sorry about your shoes.” She was now walking around barefoot, but steadfastly refused my offers of paying for new shoes or at least going to her place for a different pair. Polly just wasn’t the type that cared about silly things like shoes. To describe Polly would be like trying to explain to a dog the exact purpose of life. I don’t want to say it is impossible, but no matter what a person could say about it, nothing would sound right. My best attempt at describing Polly would be to use her own words for describing a sunrise.
“Look at that sunrise, Sam.” She sighed, like any other person would when speaking of their passion. “There is something that no one person can ever fully see because there are so many parts to it. It is something so utterly beautiful that no one person could ever fully comprehend its beauty. Something with more heart and soul and essence than anything else in this world, and what does it do with that kind of power? It rises every morning and does all it can to show the world every part they missed before because they need to appreciate the good parts and the bad. It allows itself to be as beautiful as it knows it is because there is no beauty without truth. It uses every bit of its heart and soul and essence to make the world a better place. It doesn’t abuse its power, only uses it.” It was the most accurate description I had ever heard for a sunrise, but now, when I remember it, all I think of is Polly. That is Polly’s light shining onto the darkest parts of my life, just like the sunrise on the water in the morning.
We talked, Polly and I, about useless things like work and taxes. Those are things I would rather not mention here because knowing what a person does for a living or how much money they make shouldn’t make a difference about who they are as an individual. Polly’s physical features have nothing to do with it either. Think of Polly simply as a woman and just know that her inner beauty was the most astonishing thing I had ever experienced up to that point.
“Let’s go get some pancakes, Sam.” Wow. Inner beauty or not, pancakes in the morning count for something.
“Alright.”
Sitting now in a small restaurant packed full of people on their way to fulfill their destinies, I asked Polly why she stayed with me all night.
“Some things, Sam,” she answered, “are just coins in a piggy bank.”
“Umm… okay.” I ate my pancakes in silence for a few moments as I pondered her words. Some things about Polly, I realized then, were understood only by Polly. After one blueberry pancake, which is equivalent to approximately five seconds, I admitted to Polly, “I don’t get it.”
At this point I realize that Polly either really likes to laugh, or she thinks that I’m a complete moron. “What I meant,” she explains, giggling, “was that some things are small treasures you pick up every so often and save. Things like a smile from a mean next-door neighbor or ice cream on a hot day. They are good things that happen and they all have their own value. When you add them all up they comprise a whole, one great thing made up of a bunch of emotionally valuable things. It’s a matter of sacrifice for someone to take some of their coins, some of their whole great thing, to fill someone else’s piggy bank.” Polly had a very sneaky way of telling me she took pity on me.
“So you were helping me fill my piggy bank?” I asked, slightly confused by the concept.
“Exactly.” That was all she would say about it and we both sat in silence while we finished our pancakes.
* * * * * * * * *

There were so many things to be done today that writing this now seems exhausting. It is raining outside and I sit alone at my desk wondering how Polly knew so much about life and how important it was for me to understand it. I am looking out my window and watching the rain slide over the glass and I think I can see the world as I used to, with clarity just out of reach behind a blurry sheet of tangible nothingness. Something so refreshing that you don’t believe it’s real, but you can feel its existence by simply reaching out for it. I believe there is a point for everybody where they stop believing in their worries and the trouble they’ve seen and their “nothingness” fades away, their world coming into focus for the first time. For me, clarity came through Polly.
“Why do you think that people expect to have food in their bellies, love in their hearts, and friends by their side, but hardly anyone expects to be hit by a bus, get hurt by another person or get eaten by a shark?” Polly asked me as we left the restaurant, heading back towards our little patch of grass where we sat the night before. “Isn’t pain just as valid as love? Isn’t it even more common?”
“Maybe people just like to be optimistic about life sometimes.” I replied, shrugging my shoulders. “People respond to pain just as emotionally as they respond to love, but with less rewards, so they try not to think about pain as much.” Get that – I actually said something reasonably intelligent! Score one point for me!
“What if our reward for pain is a lesson learned?” Well, okay, score two for Polly.
“I’ve been drinking most of the night. I’m not too on the ball at the moment.” Ah, defeat. It can rip apart the ego like a beaver through a toothpick.
“Have you ever had an ‘Oh-Gee-Gosh’ moment, Sam?” She asked, slipping her hand into the crook of my arm.
“A what?”
“A time in your life when, ‘Oh, that makes sense. Gee, this is perfect for me. Gosh, I have my answers and I am totally happy here.’ And you realize that everything will work out fine for you and yours.” She tells me. Polly had a lot of theories about life that started off sounding simple, but got very complex and confusing once she explained them.
“No.” I replied quickly. “Have you?”
“No, but I think we could get there together.”
* * * * * * * * *

The rain is still pouring down across my window and I can see my reflection in the glass, distorted and expressionless. If I close my eyes I can hear the steady beat of raindrops falling from the sky onto the ground below and I imagine the beats getting louder and faster as my heart joins the previously gentle rhythm. When Polly asked me about the ‘Oh-Gee-Gosh’ moment, I sincerely believed we would create one together. I suppose optimism is my downfall.
“I’ve enjoyed talking to you today, Sam, but I think I should get home now.” Disappointed, but understanding, I nodded my head.
“Would you like me to walk you home?” I offered gallantly.
“No, thank you. But you really should visit me sometime.” She wrote her phone number and address on a slip of paper and handed it to me.
“I will.” I promised. She turned to walk away and slowly turned back, wrapping her arms around my neck like an old friend. We held each other for a few moments and when she stepped back there was a single tear tracing a small line down her cheek, breaking my heart somehow with every slow inch. “Why are you crying, Polly?” I asked her, wiping the lone drop from my sight.
“If I never see you again, promise you’ll remember me.” She looked so sad in that one instant that I thought her eyes might drown in themselves. She was looking at me now through that blurry sheet of tangible nothingness, struggling to see me clearly and never risking her own personal downpour.
“I’ll even eat pancakes on this day for the rest of my life.” I joked, raising my right hand and placing my left over my heart.
“Good.” Polly walked away then and I was left standing all alone in a world meant for two.
* * * * * * * * *
Again as I sit here on this day one year later, I thank Polly for inspiring me and for showing me that life is everything we are. The good and the bad, the love and the pain, the hope and the sorrow, the pancakes and the hunger, and the chance meetings and last sunrises of our lives. I went to see her this morning. I brought her fresh flowers and told her a story I had heard about a crafty monkey and a giraffe with the hiccups. I think she liked it.
Her gravestone is engraved with the simple words, ‘Coins in a Piggy Bank’ and her resting spot is alone, underneath a tree on a small patch of grass near a restaurant that serves blueberry pancakes. She’d be happy here. Polly didn’t have a family and only a scattering of friends showed up for the funeral, so I gave her a place in the world, where I could look over her, and I visit all the time.
I fell in love that day. The day after my thirtieth birthday. I did not fall in love with a female stranger, but with my world, my life, and my understanding. Polly was my guide and I thank her every day for showing me who I am and what my mind can create for me.
I miss her even though I barely knew her, and always the best days are the ones where there are pancakes in the morning.







Written By: Jessica Becks