Yesterday evening Maly said to me, “we should, you know, get up early and go get breakfast tomorrow.”
I took it as an on-a-whim verbal utterance from my teenager. But I indulged her and asked, “you mean, like, you and me? Or the whole family gets up and we all go get breakfast early somewhere?”
“I don’t know. I mean, I guess the whole family could go.”
I don’t remember what was said after that. I think I might’ve said, “okay.” But the conversation didn’t carry on after that. Maly went to her bedroom and I went about whatever I was going about.
She came to me again later in the evening and said, “I was serious. We should go get breakfast tomorrow morning.”
I’d be lying if I said at that point I wasn’t concerned. The child wants to go out for breakfast on a Tuesday morning. Early. This is a teenager who is at that stage in her life where she’s being thrust into the bad habit of staying up too late and coveting as much sleep in the morning as she can. And now she wants to get up an hour early to go have breakfast with her dad. She’s like me. She’s a morning person. She gets up and she’s on her game. I’m nervous that there’s an important life question. A confession. A proposition. Something sensitive that’s going to require “getting it out the way” before the start of a Tuesday.
I’m racking my brain trying to figure out what it is that she’s going to tell me or ask me. My dad head goes to dark places – like human trafficking and drugs.
She decides on Kerbey Lane at 7:15 a.m.
I fell asleep last night, wondering why we were going to breakfast. I woke up 30 minutes before my alarm and the first thing that came to my head that question of what she was going to ask or tell me.
I heard her alarm at 6:30, and then I could hear her getting ready as I was packing Mara’s backpack.
7 a.m. and she’s standing in the kitchen waiting on me, ready to go on our breakfast date.
And that’s all it was. My first-born child and I went to breakfast together on a Tuesday at 7:15 a.m.
I asked her during the second half of our breakfast if there was anything she needed to ask me or wanted to talk about. “Or, was this just a random breakfast date with your dad?”
“Yep. Just spontaneous.”
The food was terrible. Maly said her ginger pancakes were good though. I was on edge and anxious the majority of the time. I wish I hadn’t been. I wish I would’ve known it was just a spontaneous dad and daughter breakfast. I jokingly asked last night if there was anything big that we were going to be discussing. Like if she was finally going to ask me for a pony. She laughed and said “no.” But you don’t usually say there’s going to be a big question or conversation when there’s a big question or conversation on your agenda. It’s not like you boss says, “Hey, let’s go grab breakfast so we can talk about the big downsizing” if you know absolutely nothing about the big downsizing. Your boss invites you to breakfast like everything’s normal and then he tells you about the layoffs.
I’m unbelievably thankful and blessed to have been invited to a spontaneous breakfast date with my daughter. One day I hope she gets to have that experience.
