Breakfast

It’s amazing the things you find out about your kids when you take the initiative to spend some time with them. With life being so ridiculously busy, it’s often that one-on-one time with the kids ends up being low on the priority list. That is, until your son comes up to you and says “Mom, I’m taking you out to breakfast.” How could I resist?

We started this tradition a couple years ago. My son takes me to one of our favorite breakfast places on most weekends. That can be anything from the local McDonald’s to our favorite diner. The extra few pounds I’m carrying around is probably due almost completely to the Belgian waffles, biscuits and gravy and bacon I’m consuming on a regular basis. And I wouldn’t trade it for the world. I just started ordering oatmeal and black coffee instead. The calories can go, but time alone with this guy can’t.

I learn more about my kids over a meal than I ever do just hanging out together. Breakfasts with my son have become such a tradition that when times are tough and money is tight, I truly miss the meal together, even if we still spend time together. Undivided attention is rare and I love the fact that you have to focus on each other over the table. I learn more about his hopes and dreams, his challenges, his issues with other family members this way. Eating a meal with any of them, alone, is my favorite thing.

During one of our first breakfasts in our new neighborhood, my son admitted he sometimes hates it here. He misses his house, his friends since kindergarten and his old playground. The sad fact that the old neighborhood was no longer safe doesn’t really register with him – he just misses being able to walk out the door and find his posse of buddies so they could go goof off together. I know he’ll make friends here, but it’s been slow and painful and sometimes frustrating for me. It’s almost impossible to peel him off the couch or to pry the video game controller from his hands on weekends. Where are those neighbor boys to get him outside?

It reminds me that the world is very different than it was when I was a kid. I grew up in outer NE Portland. I lived just off Klickitat Street, just like Ramona the Brave (Beverly Cleary was my idol as a kid). My youth was filled with soapbox car racers, skate boards, football games that drew blood and my house being the place everyone hung out. Very few moms worked in those days and when my Mom went to work, I was a wreck. Dad was going to have to take care of me – how would I survive days full of the 3 men in my family? I buried myself in reading and homework and tried to stay under the radar. I also played basketball by myself in the back yard, shooting until I was the best free-throw shooter on my team. Just like my son. I was also very solitary, just like my son. Wait a minute… did he get this from me?

So, the next few breakfasts may be at the kitchen table, as I continue to look for work. Basketball camp this summer may not be a possibility. But time to share my life, my thoughts and my appreciation of the phenomenal young man he has turned into will always be my priority. It just took a little guy with an allowance burning a hole in his pocket (and the desire to do something special with his mom) to teach me a valuable lesson.

When we look to our kids to be better than we were, smarter than we were, more successful, we offer them great opportunities. We also offer pressure that is undeserved and seldom helpful. Today, I’ll play horse with my son at his basketball hoop. Maybe the lessons of my childhood can be shared to help him make his life his own, not to outdo mine. That would be success indeed.