I lay in bed for several minutes while the war between consciousness and sleep waged within my body, my head buried in my arms in a futile attempt to muffle the noises of morning"s arrival. But the steady paiter of water in Mom"s bathroom resonated with the same anti-rhythm of the city around us. Six-thirty was too early for a summer morning. I sighed and rolled out of bed.
The shower stopped just as I opened the kitchen cabinet. A cartoon tiger smiling down from the side of a cereal box yielded only two tablespoons of powdered cornflake remnants. I tossed the empty box into the garbage can and opened the pantry. It was empty except for half a loaf of molded bread and a box of cornbread mix. Dismayed, I decided to watch television until my mother was ready for work.
The gardening program
