Our schedules were such that we only ate one dinner together as a family per week.
In contrast, when I was a child, growing up, nearly every dinner was at the same time, with the entire family (almost) always there. I felt bad that I was not able to provide the same experience for Austin.
Thus began breakfast Friday, the one morning that both Christine and I would be home for a meal. He would help me make the breakfast of his choice, be it waffles, pancakes or french toast. He would help make scrambled eggs. He would help me cook the roasted potatoes. Austin would wake up every Friday morning excited to cook breakfast with Daddy.
Eventually, as my schedule changed, breakfast Friday became breakfast Thursday, and breakfast Thursday would later become breakfast Saturday.
Now, with the new job, we eat breakfast together every morning and dinner together every night. As a result, a single breakfast that was once so important to me before is not as important to me now.
But Austin? He still wakes up every Saturday excited to “make” breakfast.
When I first started breakfast Friday, my intentions were to provide him with an experience of family, of being together. They would be memories to last a lifetime. I realize now that he may not take from his experiences the memories that I may have intended, but he has memories that are his nonetheless; regardless of how they are framed in his mind, he knows he is loved.