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able to take care of five kids if she divorced my dad the amount of child support would be small because my father was a mailman. She would have to work. My grandmother made breakfast and didn't talk

Listening, coffee being poured, sugar added, chairs scraped across linoleum, plates set down on the wood table. My mother not eating, smoking and coffee was her breakfast. My grandfather's plate was ready for his approval. A circle placed on a chipped painted rectangle. A mumble of thanks to my grandmother, his knife and fork was ready to eat eggs from their own chickens.

I would collect the eggs. I had to steal them from the hens. They wanted to keep them, they wanted babies. The eggshells were dirty with small soft feathers still attached. These eggs came right from the source not out of a grocery store in a cardboard carton. I had to stare at each hen. Look into that small eye as it rotated around in its small head as the neck slightly twisted. I quickly grabbed here warm egg. Terror was exchanged between the sitting hen and myself.

My grandfather's eggs set on his plate with bacon and toast. His elbows rested on the edge of the table. Then it began, the survey, the plan. Looking at the plate his only comment was, "give me the syrup". The syrup was in a metal container the shape of a log cabin. Each side had a window and the logs were printed on the all four sides. The lid was the chimney. The top was unscrewed and then he poured. The carmel color syrup went on his eggs and bacon. The toast was spared because it became the dam to keep the syrup blocked up against his eggs and bacon. Now the plate swam is carmel colored liquid. The eggs had a glaze of syrup flowing down and around the yellow egg yolks. Stop, survey, begin. The colors of fresh egg yoke and syrup start to flow together. The fork is now a shovel that takes the liquids and solids to his mouth. The deposit is made. The toast is eaten last. Saved to do the final clean up. Swirled around the plate, left, right, catching egg yoke and syrup bringing the food into his mouth. His face has a final look of conquest, done. The chair scrapes across the floor and he moves away from the table.

My grandmother was at the sink moving between the stove and the refrigerator getting my grandfathers lunch. He was a train engineer that worked for the open-pit mine located in Morenci. The train ran alone the edge of a man made canyon two miles wide and three miles long. Its terraced walls of mineral deposits created another landscape. The train would take the minerals from the ground and turn it in a commodity. He was one of the workers that kept precious metal on the New York Stock Exchange. From this mine in Arizona came the copper to make pennies. I always saw the connection between my grandfather's train and the pennies we spent. It seemed the pennies were already printed with the head of Abraham Lincoln and a date, all in the train car my grandfather engineered. My brothers and sisters played "pitch pennies" against a wall; we counted