Breakfast

Breakfast at our house was a family ritual, missed only in case of death. My mother didn’t allow anyone out of the house without breakfast, regardless of how late we were running. This unspoken edict included my father. She backed up her rule with the fact that she was a dietician. She knew what was good for us.

Breakfast was not cereal, unless it was cooked cereal. Cooked cereal meant oatmeal, the one food you could live on for months if you included milk with it. Eggs, bacon, buttered toast and juice were the usual fare. The juice was always freshly squeezed, orange or grapefruit. If we had tomato juice, she had put it up in the summer. She did vary how she cooked the eggs. If they were fried, they were cooked in the grease from the bacon, or rarely sausage. (I suspect Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle was silently influencing her lack of sausage,) She used a spatula to ease the hot grease over the top to set the yolk. Poached eggs were swirled in boiling water and served on toast. Scrambled eggs were my favorite for some reason, Soft boiled eggs, with a dab of butter on top were usually reserved for sick days. I loved the toast because it was always served with homemade jelly or preserves. One day when I was nine, I ate five pieces of toast with strawberry preserves on them. Grits came later, when we moved to Florida.

At fifteen, I began pushing breakfast later every day until I reached 2 P. M., but, I ate breakfast. I suspect that was one battle my mother chose not to fight.

I married and the breakfast routine started again. I found this task particularly annoying when I had to be at work at 7 A.M. Annoyed or not, I cooked breakfast. I began to slack off while I was pregnant. I suspect now that it was my fear of morning sickness, which I never had.

In my late twenties, after our daughter was born, I went into full rebellion. I would not eat breakfast except for dinner. However, there were some notable exceptions:

Breakfast with my husband at the Alta Mira Hotel in Sausalito was memorable. We sat outside on the terrace, drinking Ramos gin fizzes while eating eggs benedict. It was the thoughtfulness of the gesture that was most memorable. Our daughter had just broken out with roseola, after a harrowing couple of days fearing meningitis.

I breakfasted, at a conference, with a man who would be my second husband. We sat in the intimate dining room overlooking a pond with ducks. I remember only drinking coffee and talking for hours. It was the most relaxing afternoon I had spent in years.

Sunday breakfast in a French cafe in St. Augustine with a lover. We had delicious French pastries and excellent coffee. The ambiance of the cafe along with delight in my lover made for a fabulous breakfast. It set the tone for a long, lingering Sunday.

While doing some family of origin work for my doctorate, I wrote about the death of my mother’s older brother. She was nine when he died. He was twelve. According to my mother, my grandmother had been up all night with him. Harold came into her bedroom announcing, “Mama, would you please fix me some breakfast. I’m as hungry as a horse!”

My grandmother apparently asked for thirty more minutes of sleep, which Harold cheerfully granted her. Within that thirty minutes, Harold died. Suddenly a piece of the puzzle clicked into place. To a nine year old, going without breakfast meant you die.

Today, when I walked around the lake, I wanted breakfast. Not an ordinary breakfast, but a breakfast with friends in an elegant restaurant. Instead, I’m writing about it.