Before the Kettle Boils

“Some mornings don’t break—they accumulate, one quiet disappointment at a time.”

The house was wrapped in complete stillness when I woke, drawn from sleep not by sound or movement, but by the quiet insistence of that internal clock that had kept faithful time across years of motherhood, ministry, and early mornings. It didn’t ask permission; it simply operated—reliable, unsentimental, deeply embedded in my bones.

I blinked at the bedside clock, the red digits swimming briefly before settling into sharpness. 5:47 a.m. Close enough to the alarm that there was no point pretending I could return to sleep. That liminal space between wakefulness and dreams always left me disoriented—sour-mouthed and heart-thudding, haunted by fractured images that made less sense the longer I tried to recall them.

Beside me, Noah shifted beneath the weight of our shared duvet, adjusting his position with the unconscious action of someone long accustomed to cohabiting sleep. But he didn’t stir fully. He never did on mornings like this. Whether by instinct, discipline, or sheer weariness, he remained cocooned in that deep, uninterrupted rest I both envied and protected.

I rose carefully, inching upright so as not to disturb the mattress, then scrubbed my hands over my face, trying to coax myself fully into the day. A quiet prayer slipped through my lips—just a few whispered words offered into the stillness, asking for strength and patience. Not eloquent. Not grand. Just what was needed.

My feet found the cold floor and carried me toward the kitchen with the quiet assurance of a path well-trodden.

The electric kettle gurgled obligingly to life beneath my touch, its familiar song rising into the hush like a reliable friend announcing its presence. The morning ritual unfolded in its usual choreography: two mugs drawn from the drying rack—Noah’s with its chipped rim from Jerome’s overenthusiastic drying session last summer, mine bearing the faded Relief Society logo that now looked more like a weathered ghost than a statement of belonging.

Tea bags into place. Toaster clicked down with its customary resistance. Fridge nudged closed with a hip movement as I juggled the milk and butter dish. Nothing exceptional. Just the comforting rhythm of continuity.

Outside, the garden remained cloaked in that uncertain pre-dawn light—neither properly dark nor convincingly light, as though the sky hadn’t yet committed to the day. The lemon tree stood sullen and motionless beneath the heaviness of a winter sky, its dark leaves slick with dew, and its branches bowed not with expectation, but with the quiet weight of ripe fruit that had weathered the cold.

I set the boys’ scripture study materials on the dining table, smoothing their covers with unnecessary care, as though reverence might somehow be absorbed through touch. The Post-it note I’d stuck in last night still glowed bright yellow against the page—today’s assignment marked with neatness that felt increasingly like an act of defiance against everything fraying around the edges.

Doctrine and Covenants 121:7–8.

“My son, peace be unto thy soul; thine adversity and thine afflictions shall be but a small moment.”

I read it aloud in my head twice, letting the cadence settle deep into my chest. The words had comforted me in past seasons—simple, powerful promises of relief to come. But this morning, they felt different. More fragile. As if the notion of temporary suffering had become too abstract to fully believe in. The “small moments” were beginning to stack and press against each other, forming something solid, something with weight and shape and permanence.

And yet—I laid the highlighter down beside the open scriptures. Still hoped. Still tried.

Because even if peace hadn’t arrived yet, I wasn’t quite ready to stop making room for it.

I made my way down the hallway toward Charles’s room, giving myself a moment to gather composure before engaging in the daily battle of waking a sixteen-year-old from the protective cocoon of sleep. The house remained wrapped in that hushed reverence particular to early winter mornings—windows veiled in condensation, floorboards radiating their chill through even the thickest socks, the air itself holding a kind of suspended breath, daring anyone to disturb its perfect stillness.

“Charles,” I called softly through his closed door, modulating my voice to thread through the silence without rippling too far. “It’s nearly six o’clock. Time to get moving.”

No answer. Not even the faint rustle of bedclothes or the telltale grunt of semi-conscious irritation.

I eased the door open with the kind of cautious reverence one might use when entering a sacred shrine—because, in a way, teenage bedrooms were exactly that: places governed by arcane rules, infused with their occupant’s mood and mystery, and not to be entered lightly. I already knew what I’d find.

There he was. A shapeless mound beneath his thick duvet, buried like a marsupial in deep hibernation. Only the top of his head—an unruly mass of brown hair—and a single pale, sockless ankle protruded into the cool air, evidence that some skirmish had taken place overnight between boy and blanket, and the blanket had mostly won.

The room held the heavy, closed-in warmth of sleep. That particular teenage musk—equal parts body spray, detergent, and something indefinable that seemed to be exhaled by adolescent pores—hung in the air with low-grade persistence.

“Charles,” I tried again, louder this time, lacing my tone with the firm edge of maternal insistence.

Nothing.

I crossed the carpet with purposeful steps, reached out, and flicked the switch on his bedside lamp. The bulb sparked into life with its familiar, faint buzz, casting soft yellow light across the chaos of schoolbooks, crumpled clothes, and the half-eaten remains of a muesli bar he’d promised me he wasn’t taking to his bedroom.

From under the doona came a low, theatrical groan—drawn up from somewhere deep in the soul—and the blanket pulled tighter around his ears in a single, fluid movement that suggested I was the sworn enemy of all things good and holy.

“I’ve made toast,” I said, striving for casual enticement, as though a slice of buttered bread might somehow serve as a beacon leading him gently back to consciousness.

“Too early for toast,” he grumbled into his pillow, the words thick and muffled by both fabric and adolescent resistance.

“It’s never too early for the word of God,” I replied with the kind of bright conviction that felt more like a reflex than a belief, the line falling out of my mouth like an old hymn I wasn’t quite ready to question. “Come on. Seminary starts in thirty minutes, and I’m absolutely not driving you there in your pyjamas.”

That earned a twitch. Barely visible, but enough to register. A tiny signal from the depths of the doona that my words had reached some part of him—whether shame, guilt, or sheer routine, I couldn’t say.

He began to stir, inch by reluctant inch, like someone adjusting to gravity for the first time. It was the slowest unravelling imaginable, a painstaking return to wakefulness that seemed deliberately, almost artfully resistant. The very essence of teenage protest, expressed through each stubborn muscle and sigh.

I decided not to wait and see whether he would actually follow through with getting dressed. That particular error had been committed far too often on previous mornings—standing there like some hopeful motivational poster while he gradually slid back beneath the surface of sleep, lured by the warm siren-call of the doona’s embrace.

Instead, I stepped quietly back into the hallway and crossed to Jerome’s door, which stood ajar by a cautious few inches—enough to imply openness without entirely surrendering privacy. I didn’t bother knocking, just leaned gently into the space and let my eyes adjust to the room’s cultivated gloom.

He was awake now, as I’d suspected. The soft blue glow of his laptop screen illuminated the lower half of his face, casting shadows that exaggerated the curve of his jaw and made his brow appear slightly more furrowed than usual. I could see the measured flick of his fingers across the trackpad—controlled, habitual, as he skimmed whatever article or video had captured his early morning interest.

One white earbud was nestled in his left ear, the other trailing idly against his pillow like a cable to nowhere, the wire catching faintly in the tangle of sheets and discarded clothing that decorated his unmade bed. He looked suspended between states—neither fully immersed nor truly disengaged—floating in that elastic space-time that university students seemed to claim as their natural ecosystem.

At the foot of the bed, Millie maintained her usual post: curled tightly into the shape of a comma, an elegant full stop at the edge of her boy’s world. She opened one lazy eye to assess my presence, offered a perfunctory paw stretch that could’ve signified greeting or dismissal, and promptly re-closed her eye with a contented huff. The message was clear enough. All is well here. Kindly leave us to it.

I stood there longer than the moment demanded, my hand resting lightly on the wooden frame, not quite ready to step away. Just watching. Just breathing in this quiet tableau of stillness and subtle resistance.

Jerome had turned twenty-one in February. By now, in most families like ours, the missionary chapter would already have come and gone—returning home talks given, suits worn thin by service, stories beginning to filter in about readjusting to life back in the everyday. But for us, that story never began.

There had been no farewell, no white envelope with a call to serve, no Instagram post with a flag and a country. Just time—passing. And with it, a subtle drifting away from what once seemed a given. There had been cake, of course. And a family dinner. Laughter. Conversation. But not the kind of decisive announcement I’d once imagined would follow. No forms handed in. No interviews scheduled. Just a smattering of gentle, ambiguous replies when the subject came up—polite deferrals that slipped away from confrontation like polished stones skimming the surface of water.

And I’d made the decision, with no small effort, to let it lie. To choose silence over pressure. Because I’d learnt—more than once—that pressing Jerome for clarity only encouraged him to retreat deeper into his private quiet, folding in on himself like damp wool drawing away from heat. Every question carried the risk of making him smaller.

Still, that didn’t stop the tension from gathering in the corners of our family life. Subtle, unnamed. An atmosphere of waiting, not hostile but steady—like a kettle left warm on the backburner, never quite boiling but never cold.

It wasn’t disappointment, exactly. At least, not the sort I would ever voice. It was more like... the ache of a held breath. A wistful yearning I tried to keep disguised beneath all my affirmations of unconditional love. But it was there. It lived quietly in the background, in the pauses between conversations, in the tiny questions I’d stopped asking out loud.

Jerome had so much to give. Not in the loud, flashy way some boys did, but in the quiet sturdiness that really mattered. A mind that observed before it spoke. A kindness that wasn’t performed but instinctive. A moral steadiness that had never needed attention to anchor itself. And yet... here he was. Still in his childhood room. Still in yesterday’s pyjamas. Still seemingly orbiting the very idea of mission service without ever committing to land.

Would he choose it, eventually? Or had I simply clung too long to a vision of his life that was mine, not his—a cherished photograph now fading at the edges, kept more out of sentiment than current relevance?

I caught the thought before it soured, before it began to calcify into disappointment. Turned gently from the doorway and nudged the door nearly shut behind me, preserving the sliver of space that remained.

Let them rest, I reminded myself with as much grace as I could muster. Let them be who they are, not who I imagined they might become.

For now, at least.

Back in the kitchen, Noah had emerged from his own morning routine, dressed in his usual weekday uniform of a neatly pressed work shirt and navy fleece vest. He stood at the counter, cradling his first cup of tea with both hands as though it contained some essential talisman for confronting the day ahead. As I entered, he approached and kissed my temple in passing—a gesture so practised and unthinking after decades of shared mornings that it had become more instinct than decision.

“Did you already make your attempt to prod Charles into consciousness?” he asked, genuine curiosity tucked behind the quiet humour in his voice.

“I did considerably more than prod,” I replied, reaching for my own mug and letting the warmth of the ceramic seep into my palms. The tea had steeped perfectly—strong but not aggressive, familiar and grounding.

Noah chuckled with the knowing amusement of a man who had witnessed this particular ritual unfold more times than either of us could count. He eased himself into his usual chair at the dining table, the wood beneath him releasing its habitual creak—a soft signature of continuity that underpinned all our breakfast conversations.

“He’ll be here in a minute or two, then. You know it takes exactly three direct warnings and the smell of something potentially burning before he considers it a genuine emergency.”

As if summoned by paternal prophecy, Charles appeared in the kitchen doorway moments later, an unzipped hoodie draped haphazardly over his shoulders, shoelaces trailing untied across the tiles, his eyes still glazed with the unfocused look of someone whose body had beaten his brain out of bed by mere seconds.

He dropped into the chair opposite his open scriptures and proceeded to ignore them with unwavering resolve, his gaze fixed somewhere in the indeterminate middle-distance—as though the words on the page were written in a language he had long since decided not to learn.

“You need to eat something before seminary,” I said gently, watching him slump forward, all elbows and knees, his limbs having outgrown the proportions of our modest kitchen furniture.

“I am eating,” he replied, teenage logic fully engaged as he took a joyless bite of toast. No butter, no jam—just a dry, sacrificial crunch between his teeth. Effort without enthusiasm.

I hesitated, and then decided—perhaps foolishly, perhaps necessarily—that this morning called for something more. Something intentional.

“We should have a prayer together before you leave for school.”

Charles looked up with the wary expression of a teenager bracing for a test he hadn’t studied for. “Right now?”

“Yes,” I said, injecting more conviction than I actually felt. “As a family.”

His eyes flicked toward the hallway, searching for a plausible escape route. “Jerome’s still in bed, though.”

“He can join us in spirit,” I said, knowing full well how thin the justification sounded but pressing on anyway.

Noah set his mug down without comment, prepared to join me with a quiet steadiness I never took for granted. I folded my arms, hoping to lend the moment a sense of reverence that might somehow inspire compliance. I wanted this morning to mean something—even if it only meant something to me.

But Charles remained still, unmoved by my posture or intention. No reciprocal gesture. No bowed head. Just the distant stare of someone enduring rather than engaging.

“Just a short prayer,” I added, softening my tone as I tried to coax rather than compel.

He sighed. Long, theatrical, a sigh with lineage—a clear descendant of all the sighs ever sighed by teenagers who had been made to endure something they couldn’t quite name but knew they didn’t like.

“Fine,” he muttered.

I bowed my head and began, “Our dear Heavenly Father—”

The toaster chose that exact moment to announce the end of its cycle with a sharp, mechanical crack, loud enough to puncture the reverent hush I'd tried so carefully to construct. Charles jumped slightly, startled, the fragile spell of compliance broken before it had properly settled.

Almost simultaneously, Noah’s phone vibrated across the table, producing a low, sustained hum that rippled through the air with unnerving insistence—like a distant alarm warning of something you couldn’t quite identify.

But I pressed on. I kept my voice steady, offering words for safety, for peace, for the kind of strength I wasn’t sure I possessed myself. I folded a silent petition into the prayer as well—for Paul, for his wellbeing and his return—but didn’t speak his name aloud. Not here. Not now. Not with Charles sitting there, eyes half-closed and already one foot out the door.

By the time I reached “Amen,” Charles was already rising, shouldering his school bag in a single, fluid motion—like a swimmer surfacing for breath.

“Chloe texted that she’d save me a seat,” he said, moving towards the door without waiting for a reply.

“That’s lovely of her,” I said, forcing evenness into my tone despite the small sag in my chest. “Please tell her I said hello when you see her.”

He didn’t respond with words—just gave a short nod, phone already lit in his hand, fingers scrolling as he exited the kitchen. His long stride carried him away with an ease that made me feel, suddenly and acutely, like a relic from a different part of his life.

A quieter part.

A part that didn’t travel with him anymore.

I stood there for several moments after his departure, arms still folded—not in prayer now, but in a posture of quiet collapse. The warmth that had once filled the kitchen, purposeful and nurturing as I’d moved through the motions of breakfast, now felt strangely hollow. It was as though the effort of trying to manufacture meaning—a shared moment of faith, a flicker of connection—had drained something essential from the air, leaving only a lingering draught in its place.

Noah remained at the table, watching me with the kind of unobtrusive sympathy that only comes from long familiarity. His hands rested lightly on the back of his chair, and his eyes—so often understated in conversation—were intent, quietly scanning my face and stance before choosing his words.

“You're doing considerably better than you think you are,” he said, his voice low but firm with conviction.

“I'm not looking for praise or reassurance,” I replied, sharper than I intended.

“I didn't suggest that you were.”

There was no rebuke in his tone, only the calm steadiness of someone who had weathered enough of my early morning tempests to recognise the difference between actual anger and worn-through resolve. He reached for his work coat, draped over the back of the unused chair, and slung it over one shoulder with that casual ease he always seemed to carry—making ordinary movements look unbothered, even graceful, while I felt each gesture in my own limbs like a strain.

“I need to get to the yard before the delivery trucks start arriving,” he said, already mentally shifting into the practical rhythms of the day.

I nodded in response, automatic. “Drive safely.”

“Always do.”

He crossed to me and pressed a kiss to my cheek, the bristle of his hasty shave familiar against my skin, his aftershave lingering in the air between us—a scent that had become part of our mornings as much as the tea or the creak of chairs. Then he was gone, the front door closing behind him with a soft finality that announced the beginning of my solitary stretch of the day.

And just like that, I was alone.

Not truly, of course—the house still held its inhabitants, scattered through various rooms like punctuation marks in a sentence that hadn’t yet found its rhythm. Jerome, cocooned in blankets and the glow of his laptop, would lay there for another hour at least, before surfacing with a burst of restless energy and a trail of cereal bowls left on windowsills and bookshelves. Millie would likely re-emerge around mid-morning, tail wagging in hopeful anticipation, demanding food with the regal expectation of a creature who had always believed herself essential to household order.

But this quiet—the silence left in Noah’s wake—was of a different quality. It wasn't peaceful or companionable, as it had been earlier when I'd moved through the kitchen with purpose. This silence carried substance. It pressed against the air like an unfinished thought, thick with waiting. As though it expected something from me. As though it knew something I hadn’t yet admitted to myself.

I turned my gaze across the kitchen with the reflexive assessment of someone who’d spent decades reading the landscape of domestic life. Crumbs scattered across the benchtop, faint streaks of jam near the toaster, abandoned dishes in the sink—the quiet, unremarkable aftermath of another morning that had failed to be anything more than functional. Charles’s toast crusts still sat on the plate, abandoned without thought, small testaments to a teenage routine I couldn’t seem to imbue with meaning, no matter how persistently I tried.

The boys’ scriptures remained precisely where I’d laid them. Their spines unbent, their gilded edges catching a sliver of pale winter light that slipped through the window above the sink—mocking, almost, in their untouched perfection.

I sighed—one of those deep, reflexive exhalations that seemed to come from somewhere older than my lungs—and began clearing the dishes with the muscle memory of a thousand similar mornings. The day hadn’t even properly begun and already I felt as though I was running behind, two hours late to a race no one else had realised had started.

There was laundry waiting for the line. A phone call I could no longer postpone, chasing down final details for Saturday’s Relief Society activity—already fraying at the edges with the usual well-meaning disorganisation. Visiting teaching reports to follow up from sisters who, despite gentle reminders, seemed to have collectively decided that silence was a perfectly reasonable substitute for accountability. A frozen chicken still needing to be moved from freezer to fridge if dinner was to be anything more than last-minute improvisation.

And beneath all of that—the hum of ordinary tasks and the shuffling rhythm of routine—lurked the heavier question: whether Claire had softened since yesterday’s phone call. Whether she might now be willing to speak like a sister-in-law again, instead of an injured bird lashing out with fear and fury. Or whether I even had the emotional wherewithal to risk trying again, knowing that another harsh exchange might undo what little peace I’d managed to stitch together overnight.

The refrigerator offered its steady, low hum in reply—a domestic companion bearing quiet witness. From somewhere down the hallway came the familiar thud of Millie shifting position, presumably in pursuit of the optimal balance between vigilance and comfort. Likely her fourth attempt since I’d last seen her.

I wiped down the benchtops and found myself murmuring aloud—not with any expectation of clarity or comfort, but simply to displace the silence.

“Just focus on the small things, Greta. One task at a time.”

The words didn’t unlock any wisdom. They didn’t untangle the knots of family tension or turn the frozen chicken into a roast dinner. But they kept my hands moving. They tethered me to the tangible, to the here-and-now of kitchen benches and drying racks, rather than the overwhelming elsewhere of what might come next.

And on some mornings, that quiet, practical momentum was the only thread strong enough to carry you forward—until something better decided to arrive.