Sunday mornings have always been my time with Dad. He was an early riser from having to get up at 4:00 AM in order to be at whatever job site he was on at that time. When you work bridge construction, you kind of have to go to where the bridge is, and most crews start by 7:00 AM. He was never able to turn off that internal alarm clock, so he'd still be up early on the weekends. On the occasions that I'd be living in the same town, I'd go over for coffee, and we'd sit and talk. Sometimes, I'd stay with him at the place out on Goose Pond, and we'd sit in the kitchen and listen to the quiet quickly being replaced by birdsong. If we were really lucky and the wind was either still or blowing from the east, we might hear the loons calling to one another.

My dad wasn't a big guy. Maybe five eight in his workboots. I don't know what he weighed, but whatever it was, it wasn't much and would have been all muscle. Wiry, is what I heard one of the cousins call him, Billy is a wiry little son of gun. He was Billy to the family, and Moe to everyone else. Moe was short for Moses, Billy because he was Moses Jr and our last name is Bill.

He'd be sitting there at the table in his jeans and a pocket tee-shirt, his Quebecois ancestry obvious in his wiry build. His face, arms, and neck were all weathered dark by sun and wind from working outdoors all his life, making it easy to see our native ancestry, too. All except his feet, they never saw much sun and were almost blindingly white compared to the rest of him. Every so often, when he didn't think I was looking, he'd look over with love and pride in his dark eyes.

I miss those Sunday mornings.