Coffee at Seven Across the Loop

Mom looked across the loop at the host sign. Then she looked at me, standing there in my gray hoodie with a sleeve of paper cups, and at the folding table, and at the blue enamel pot.

“I’d like that very much, Dwayne,” she said.

Fritzie Albers started clapping. Then the Kansas couple. Then the young dad with the baby on his hip, who could only clap with one hand on his leg.

Then the whole line. Mom waved them all off and told them to hush, and her face was as red as a tomato.

I had paid for site 14 through the end of August. I asked at the gatehouse about a refund for the last two weeks.

The woman at the window said they did not usually do that, and then she looked at the name on my reservation.

“Is this Rosemary’s daughter?” she asked.

I said it was. She refunded the whole two weeks and would not hear a word about it.

Kendra pulled out of site 3 on a Saturday morning in the middle of August. She had her camper hitched and ready by eight.

She had already said goodbye to Fritzie and the Kansas couple and half of Loop B.

Then she walked across the gravel to site 14, where Mom was rinsing out the blue enamel pot, and she said, “Let’s get you moved, Mama.”

My husband hooked up Mom’s trailer and pulled it across the loop into the host site, backing it in on the first try again.

I carried the camp stove. Mom carried the coffee can of sugar packets and the jar of creamer.

And Kendra picked up the folding table.

She folded the legs one at a time, very careful, the way Mom always did. She carried it across the loop in the bright morning sun, past the line of pines and the lake glinting behind them.

She set it down at the front of the host site, right where the gravel of the pad meets the gravel of the loop. She opened the legs one at a time and set it square, facing out.

Then she stood back and looked at it. “Is that right?” she asked.

Mom came over and looked. She moved it one inch to the left. “Now it is,” she said.

Kendra laughed, and Mom laughed, and I stood there holding a camp stove and crying like a fool in front of half the campground.

Kendra hugged us both and climbed in her truck and pulled her camper out of the loop toward the highway. She honked twice at the bend. Mom waved until she could not see the truck anymore.

The next morning, at seven o’clock sharp, my mother set the blue enamel pot on her folding table at the host site and poured the first cup for herself. Then she sat down in her camp chair and waited.

She did not have to wait long. She never does.

Kendra calls her every Sunday after church now, from Ardmore. She sends a picture of her coffee every morning. It is always in the old brown mug with the chip in the handle.

Next June will be Mom’s thirteenth summer at the lake. She says the one across the road counts double.

I have already booked my vacation week. I am bringing a new sleeve of paper cups.

By August the ranger asked Mom to take the host site back, and Kendra helped her move the coffee table.