Breakfast
One early summer morning, my mom was fuming, but she was able to focus her anger and frustrated energy into making breakfast.
At the time, we were living in our cousin’s basement while our family looked for a home of our own. As the sky warmed up, it became a perfect azure day. The house slowly filled with activity. In the living room, my youngest sister and cousins laughed and giggled as they bounced up and down in front of the X-box Connect sensor, playing virtual adventures. When they woke up, my other siblings and remaining cousin perched on perilous chairs in front of the desktop computer, avidly watching ‘Minecraft’ how-to videos. In the front room, my Aunt May paired triangles and parallelograms in preparation for sewing her next quilt. Elsewhere, Uncle Jim might have been reading a computer code manual or researching a two person-sized sailboat kits. Dad may have picked up a piece or two of clothing and dropped it in the washer. Then my mom called everyone up for pancakes. In the basement bedroom, I slept through it all.
Eventually I woke. At first it seemed a typical uneventful day; I had stayed up late to finish my latest conquest from the library. Megan and my cousin Allen were kicking a ball around in the backyard. Logan sat stiffly, defending his computer time from any invader of his nearby space. My other cousins Jessie and Steven were now playing X-box sports games. Rebecca had lost interest in the game and was lost in her own world, playing with borrowed toys. I bounded up the two small sets of stairs with the great enthusiasm of the well rested. As I ate a bowl of cold cereal, my mom and aunt took turns telling me what happened at breakfast. Their eyes danced with merriment since they already knew the punch-line.
“When I made pancakes this morning, I mixed the flour, the eggs, the milk, and then I added the sugar…” My mom began retelling the story.
It had been a surprisingly quiet meal. Mom continued to pour the batter and flip new flapjacks as everyone—my aunt, my uncle, my three cousins, my dad, and my three siblings slowly ate their one or two pancakes.
After her first bite, Aunt May asked with a blank face, “Can you pass the strawberry preserves?” After it was handed over, Aunt May proceeded to spread the jam liberally across her food.
“Can you put jam on mine too?” Jessie and Steven asked. Before Aunt May could respond, they decided against the strawberry flavor. “Never mind.” Instead they waited their turn for a different topping. My cousins, siblings, my dad and maybe even my uncle soaked their breakfast in syrup.
After a few more bites, the children excused themselves to go play. Not one word was spoken about the meal. Instead, they talked excitedly about the next games they wanted to play.
Then my mom ate one of her own creations. I could nearly see the event. She poured a drizzle of the maple liquid on the top of the perfectly golden pancake. She turned her fork on its side and cut a piece out of the circle. She raised it to her mouth and ate it. Mom made a disgusted face and guzzled a tall glass of lukewarm water.
“I don’t understand. Why does this taste so bad? I even put in a little extra sugar than the two tablespoons recommended!” My mom exclaimed. Her anger from earlier this morning had dissolved, leaving puzzlement in her expression.
“Sugar? What sugar?” Aunt May asked curiously, “I didn’t think we had any.”
Mom went into the pantry, “This sugar,” she said as she pulled out a large non-labeled container.
I had caught up to Aunt May and Mom’s story enough to comment with humorous horror, “Oh, no!”
Aunt May, Mom and I burst into laughter. I was no longer excluded from their great joke. Just before I had come up, my mom had scraped away the remaining salty flapjacks into the trash.
Mom smiled, “I was really grateful that everyone was so polite, even though the pancakes tasted so terrible.”
I smiled in return, but inwardly I wondered. Would I have been so kind?
