Around 8:00 AM, I started some breakfast in the kitchen. The kitchen at Casa Amor was perhaps my favourite place in the whole house. It was open to both the dining room and the living room. The Italian tiles of the backsplash and eighteen-by-eighteen tiles on the floor. Double-ovens in the wall, a pizza oven for making brick/wood-fired pizza, and then the Italian marble tops. Not only was it stylish, but was kept immaculate.

Brad insisted on a lite breakfast of eggs and bacon, which was easy for me to muster up. I made only enough for he and I as I figured that the kids would sleep a bit. Now adults; of course, but they would always be my "little" children. I was correct, as Ryan and Isabella creeped down the stairs around 9:30 AM and Liam 10. By the time they made it to the breakfast table, I had baked my favourite breakfast dish:  blueberry souffle. The recipe had been handed down for years, and I was the third in the generational lineage to have a copy. I had yet to share my guarded secret with Isabella, as she had yet to pry it out of me. Now that she and Ryan were forming a special bond, I decided to go ahead and give her a handwritten copy that morning.

After Brad had eaten, he retreated back to the office to write. Despite the fact that this was a vacation, he was in the middle of a book and had recently hit a stride he did not want to waiver from. He explained he was in the character development phase, and needed to be constantly writing until these characters came to life.

As I thought about my own book, there was not much to my character. She was a lonely woman for most of her adult life. Perhaps there were too many immediately identifiable references to myself; but in a way, I wanted my story told. Brad took a break around 11:00 and insisted that I bring him up to date on my work. He retreated to a leather chair in the Florida room and read my entire novel to this point.

His suggestion was that I turn it into a memoir. He, too, had noticed the personal references and promised to help me reshape my novel if I would allow him to. With hesitation, I nodded in agreement.

The following morning, I heard Brad arise around 3:45 AM. For some reason, my internal time clock woke me up to pee at that time, so I had heard him scurry down the steps toward the Keurig. This was not an odd occasion for Brad, as he proclaimed to do his best work before daybreak.

I let him get settled into his chair. I could hear him moving things into place. A stapler, some pens, his cup of coffee and then the typewriter. It was an older model. The kind with the keys that strike the page with every keystroke. And the kind that you must push the carriage back to the other side to start a new line. I so much wanted to go and greet him, but I let the sounds of him working hypnotize me like a beautiful lullaby.

By 6:00 AM, I could stand it no longer. The sounds were intoxicating to the point of driving me crazy. I scurried down to the kitchen myself, and started my own cup of coffee. I had remembered from our conversations a few weeks before that Brad had enjoyed red grapefruit juice in the morning. I had purchased some red grapefruit at the Farmer's Market in anticipation of his arrival. I halved one, sprinkled brown sugar on it, and broiled it for about twenty seconds. I took another cup of coffee and some grapefruit up to "Brad's office".

He greeted me with a kiss even though I had yet to brush my teeth. Neither of us had; in fact, but at least some citrus and some roasted coffee beans had passed over our lips. He took a minute to bring me up to speed about where he was in his book and then asked me about mine. I was proudly able to tell him that I was eighty percent finished, but I wanted him to show me how to complete it that summer at Casa Amor.

He got up, and sat me down at "the machina". This was a new piece of equipment for me, and I was a little nervous. "How hard must I strike the keys", I wondered? Brad was kind enough to "show me the ropes". After getting me acquainted with "Charlotte"; his typewriter, he challenged me to write as fast as I could for fifteen minutes. Not on the topic of my book, but rather anything that came to mind. It was an exercise in allowing your brain to do the writing. I hammered out 2,000 words in fifteen minutes. We both laughed at one another, as I thought I had done horrible and Brad insisted that I was a "first-time professional".

We kissed some more, as we watched the sun creep over the horizon at Casa Amor, the first day.