It wasn’t a night that would stand out in most people’s
minds when they looked back on their lives.
It might not have been enough to be a highlight of the week. There wasn’t a big storm, there wasn’t a
major news story, no member of the family had been empowered or imperiled.
It was a normal weeknight evening when Kathy and I greeted
our daughter, Lucy, who’d arrived after dinnertime to take a few things from
her high school bedroom to her post-college house. It was only going to be a few minutes of
course, but when talk about the new job and updates on the old gossip stoked
the conversational flames, it was quickly nine o’clock. It’s the time of the evening when I typically
begin snacking and the monkey on my back was craving bananas.
I asked my daughter, “Are you feeling peckish?”
Lucy replied in kind, in old movie fashion, “I could eat.”
My son was due to quit his work shift thirty minutes later
as Lucy shouted, “Somebody better text Dan.”
Kathy quickly grabbed her cell phone and pounded a staccato beat on her
keyboard before pulling another dusty box out of Lucy’s closet.
It was fifty cents worth of eggs, maybe a buck-and-a-half in
bacon. Biscuits in a tube brought the
total to three bucks tops. If you want
to factor in the cheese slices and the margarine, hell let’s make it five
bucks. I probably dropped something that
the dog ate and I chose to forget it.
Anyway, what I’m saying is, it was just intended as a late
night snack. Seconds of preparation had
gone into the menu plan, so it was surprising to me when the back door flew
open with splintering force and my son walked in. Dan, who never met a curfew he did NOT like,
a fellow who often bridged directly from the time clock to the buddy’s
apartment, was home for a mid-evening visit.
“Mom texted me there was hot breakfast cooking,” he volunteered, an
explanation that was sorely needed at the time.
I had it on the dining room table five minutes later and
five minutes after that, you would’ve needed a C.S.I. team to find evidence of
it. We ate too much and we stayed up too
late, but I don’t think any of us regretted it.
I felt a peculiar pride in having produced the humble supper that stuck
with me into the next day. I was at my
place of employment, changing out of my loafers into my work shoes…
Shoes…
Shoes equal love…
My mother always had a special bond with her father because
of shoes. As a small child with a
rheumatic heart, five year-old Carolyn Johnston wasn’t allowed out of bed. Most people would have just shook their head
sadly when they heard the sickly child wish for an accessory she couldn’t use,
but my grandfather didn’t. He bought his
baby girl a pair of shoes. He bought
them with money he didn’t have for a child that couldn’t use them…yet. My mother, to this day, has a fantastic set
of shoes. It’s not at the Imelda Marcos
level, but it should be respected. There
isn’t a member of my family that hasn’t been shoe shopping with her. You knew she might buy herself a pair, but
you knew for sure she was buying you a pair.
Maybe two.
And where shoes equal love for some, it seemed breakfast was
my Valentine’s card. When I was courting
Kathy, I would come by on Saturday mornings after an all-night shift, with two
Hardee’s fast-food platters. That
obviously worked. A few years later, I
was married to that girl, though still working midnights. We were, at the latter point, eating cinnamon
rolls in our own house with our first-born, watching “The New Adventures of
Winnie the Pooh”. When Dan came along, Kathy
had attempted chocolate chip pancakes.
By the time he was three, she had mastered them. There was more than one sleepover that wound
up at our house because of a promised flapjack feast.
They didn’t know at the time that we often substituted
breakfast food for the usual dinner fare because many of the morning staples
were cheaper than the steaks, chops and chicken we might have preferred. I could make an omelet that looked like it
jumped off of a Denny’s menu. What I
couldn’t do was stretch the grocery budget any further. They didn’t know it then and they don’t care
now.
Now breakfast equals love.
Dan graduated from community college this weekend, opting to
have the family gathering at The Bomber, a historic diner in downtown Ypsilanti,
for the post-ceremony meal. There were
eight of us, unanimously choosing breakfast for our mid-day sustenance. My rapidly growing boy showed me his scuffed
dress shoes and asked if I thought they had any life left in them.
“Better talk to Grandma,” I advised.
Yeah, I know, a pair of shoes lasts a lot longer than a
plateful of hash browns. But you can’t
make an omelet out of a penny loafer, either.
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