'BELVUHDEAH, come HEEYUH BOY!! (spelled phoenetically for your verbal enjoyment)**

i love saturday mornings....being the first one awake and enjoying the quiet of the un-stirred apartment. what a picture i am - hair disheveled, eyes still fighting to fully open, old PJ bottoms and t-shirt. soon, i will make pancakes and maple sausage. put some coffee on for sammie joy, who will eventually stumble out of the bedroom where she now sleeps soundly, a bewildered look on her face, hair even more disheveled than mine, eyes more sleepy (but her pjs are snazzy flannels from l.l. bean, so she's got one up on me!). we will eat together, breaking the fast of the night, sighing contentedly......because everyone knows that unstructured saturdays (like sunday afternoon naps) are the some of the best things in life. the possibilities seem endless....listening to some jazzy vibes, perhaps doing a bit of cleaning (nothing too strenuous), rearranging some furniture, maybe renting a movie, grabbing coffee out....the utterly mundane yet totally satisfying.

when i was little, we had a ritual in my family - bugs bunny on saturday morning. my sister and i would plant ourselves in front of the t.v., and call upstairs to my father, telling him to hurry...giving him a countdown of the moments until the music started. and i remember my father rushing down the stairs as he heard the opening strains of that looney toons theme song. that hour or so each week was one of the only times we scheduled to spend together as a family. i can still hear my dad's laughter, full and loud....little did i realize at the age of 3 that bugs bunny and all his cohorts were actually quite adult (sometimes even esoteric) in their humor. at the time, i just thought my dad still had a bit of kid left in him. maybe he did, but whatever the reason, i didn't care. i felt part of something special in those moments. to this day, we still laugh over bugs's rendition of the barber of seville....still occasionally sing the opening lines of 'kill the wabbit'....still think that daffy duck doing the scarlet pumpernickel is one of the funniest bits in cartoon history.... looney toons. these are the ties that bind.

even though i don't watch bugs bunny anymore, i still carry a bit of that whimsy with me and attach it to saturday mornings....now, the loud and triumphant music has been replaced with ella fitzgerald or mel torme, a light swoon to coax me into consciousness. and, to be honest, i prefer things a bit more subdued. it's the calm that excites me now. the promise of things slowing down for a few moments - long enough for me to catch my breath and enjoy where i am right this second.

if i had to do it over, i wouldn't change a thing about those saturday mornings back in the late 70s...except maybe that i would have crawled into my dad's lap more often - would have realized what a gift i was being given in those moments....would have let myself stay a child just a little bit longer to have the chance to spend one more saturday hearing my father's laughter echoing through the house.

now, silence is all i hear....

**if you watched looney toons with any regularity, you will recall the southern gentleman who had this large dog, belvedere, that he was constantly summoning. this is one of my family's personal favorites....