The Good Stuff Too

Woke up that morning to a cold house, gray skies, and the first snow of the year falling outside. I'd just lit the fireplace when I noticed a familiar pickup parked at my curb out front and Steve-O walking up my driveway collar up, head down to the wind, hands jammed in his pockets and looking like a man on a mission today.

"Hey Rox," Steve said when I opened the door. "Knew you'd be up. I just wanted to tell you about last night. You got coffee on yet?"

Laughing I let him in from the cold and tell him if he will check on the fire I will see what I can scrounge up for breakfast. While I dig out eggs, bacon and cheese for an omelette, Steve brings in more wood from my garage. When he finishes up he comes into the kitchen, tosses his coat over a chair and takes a seat up on the countertop beside where I am working on the stove.

While Steve sits he fishes mugs from the cabinet for coffee and pours them while he gives me the highlights of the night before. During the course of the night Steve helped bring a baby into this world and his face lights up when he tells me all about it. It's hard not to join in his enthusiasm.

The reason Steve stopped this morning is something I understand very well as both he and I are in the same boat. Dedicated to our careers we are both single and sometimes when the end of shift comes, when it's time to go home after a good day's work, there is nobody there to share that with. The ups or the downs. Sometimes those good days seem hollow without someone to tell, someone to share with and so from time to time we get together for breakfast or supper just to talk and have someone else to tell these things to. It's a friendship bourne of similar circumstances, that and we have worked for years together. Sometimes we get blasted by our married and childrened counterparts who think that just because they are at that stages in their lives, anyone else who is not married with children must be ignorant. If I had a dime for everytime someone says... "Well you don't have children so you wouldn't understand." People blurt that out without thinking and so we the single people of our departments have to fend for ourselves. Steve gets that and understands it too.

We finish breakfast and nearly the entire coffeepot before my pager goes off. Walking Steve back out the door I ask him if the happy parents he'd helped had named the baby after him. He laughs and says no, that would really have sucked as the baby was a girl. "Ingrates!" I laugh and thank him for coming by to share his news with me.

I am glad that Steve stopped by. So many times when the guys drop by its to kvetcht or vent about the job, co workers or whatever. So it was nice to have someone stop in and share the good stuff with me. Helping bring a life into the world is indeed the good stuff, and there are not many higher moments than that.