Making Breakfast.

It begins on the day she is born: A mother making breakfast for a child.
There will be rituals: clock, bottle, cloth.
There will be equipment: bowl, pitcher, curved silver spoon.
Then, just as astonishingly as it began, there is an end.
When do you stop making your child breakfast?

My girls have assembled their own breakfasts for a very long time. This is, after all, a skill. No one wants to send their child to college unable to fry an egg.

You wake up one day, and this simple act of daily mothering is gone.
The steel cut oatmeal, the frittatas, the whatevas – these become weekend treats.

Which is all fine . . . until I realized my oldest daughter, a senior, would soon be eating breakfast somewhere other than home.

My friend Ellen--who has a girl the same age--and I decided to spend this last school year cooking breakfast for our daughters.

While the rest of the house sleeps, we reconnect with the simple pleasure of whisking eggs and swirling blueberries into muffins. There are new favorites now: yogurt layered with strawberries, honey and granola. Asparagus and cheddar cheese omelettes. Hot rice cereal with cinnamon.

Will she remember I did this for her? I’m not sure. But I will remember.

I will remember watching her lift the spoon to her mouth.
Just as I remember all the other times, in the low pink light of sunrise, standing by her high chair with the kitchen clock ticking in the background, I lifted the small spoon for her.