Breakfast

sam­bear just made break­fast that is even bet­ter than those I remem­ber from my child­hood, bis­cuits and all. That’s significant.

Break­fast was the only real­ly “com­fort­able” meal in my par­ents’ home. There were usu­al­ly bis­cuits and gravy and eggs and grits and bacon and sausage and orange juice and lots of cof­fee. Some­times Dad­dy made hash browns if he had a han­ker­ing for them. We actu­al­ly talked to each oth­er over break­fast, despite the fact that we were always on a sched­ule to get some­where (school, church, work—yes, Sat­ur­days too). Those were the most relaxed inter­ac­tions I recall with my fam­i­ly of ori­gin, ever.

Lunch­es were eat­en alone at home as there was the time around chores, or at school/work in the absolute min­i­mum time nec­es­sary to take in fuel, and almost always con­sist­ed of a sand­wich of some sort. I’m still not big on sandwiches.

We did­n’t do snacks most­ly. Well, my broth­er snacked a lot, but he was a jock and that was expect­ed. Females don’t eat snacks, because they don’t need them and they might get fat. Snacks were big while watch­ing sports, but since I hat­ed that I did­n’t eat them then, either.

Din­ner was eat­en in silence. We always ate togeth­er at the table, but Dad­dy had the TV on in the next room so he could hear the news. Any noise that might make him miss so much as one word was absolute­ly ver­boten and would be punished—sometimes with harsh words, some­times phys­i­cal­ly. I tried real­ly hard to not make any noise at all, peri­od. It was always uncom­fort­able and anx­ious and I hat­ed it. I would have skipped din­ner every day if I could have, but it was­n’t allowed.

So my main com­fort foods—cheese grits, scram­bled eggs, and biscuits—are all asso­ci­at­ed with break­fast. Not so sur­pris­ing, I guess, but I did­n’t real­ly think about this stuff much until today.

I don’t like to eat in front of people—especially my fam­i­ly of ori­gin. I don’t even want to eat break­fast with them any­more, so sam­bear’s culi­nary achieve­ments mean even more to me now. They always have to com­ment neg­a­tive­ly on what­ev­er I con­sume or don’t con­sume. Always. They were every bit as crit­i­cal when I was under­weight as they are now, so it isn’t just because I’m fat. In fact, now my broth­er keeps insist­ing that our kids WILL be fat because sam­bear and I are big peo­ple. (Any­one who has seen our kids will laugh about that one.)

I like the way our home works far bet­ter than the way my par­ents’ home worked. I love you, sam­bear and shad­owkatt and R and G.