It’s early morning. Perhaps winter because I remember being warm and snug in bed.
From the kitchen I hear my parents speaking softly, and the aromas of breakfast reach my room.
I’m probably in grade school so I’ll likely go back to sleep. But I’m comforted by the sounds and smells.
It’s around 5:00 or 5:30 a.m. and my mother is cooking breakfast for my father.
Monday through Friday, she did this every day. Even though she wouldn’t have to leave for work for almost three hours later. She would be in the kitchen while he was getting dressed and ready to leave for his job at the same textile factory where she worked.
This went on for years. To the best of my memory she did this every weekday for the rest of their marriage until he passed in 1978.
I don’t think she cooked quite the same way for my stepfather. For one thing, he continued to work the swing shift so his morning routines varied.
But, after I moved away from home, and then after I was married, when I’d be back to visit, there would be breakfast.
Breakfast then consisted of either sausage or bacon, sometimes both. There were biscuits and always the offer of eggs. I usually declined the eggs, not because I have an aversion to them, but in a small attempt to not have her have to cook something else.
Of course there was coffee.
And orange juice. Always orange juice.
I drank a lot of orange juice as a child and teenager. As an adult, I backed off because of the sugar content in juice.
Never mind that. When I was at my mother’s house, at her table, there was always a new quart (or gallon if family was with me) of orange juice that she expected us, mainly me, to drink.
It didn’t matter how many times I told her not to buy it.
I remember snarking once on Facebook that you couldn’t go home again, but that you could always go back and have your mother cook you breakfast.
Every visit. For years.
We’re talking until she was well up into her 90s.
No amount of “please don’t worry about breakfast” would ever convince her that she didn’t need to cook.
My wife and I last visited over Labor Day weekend in 2024. Of course before we left to return home, there was breakfast.
Even though she no longer cooked much for herself. She cooked for us.
A little more than a month later she was gone.
I can’t go home again. I can’t even go home for breakfast anymore.
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