Sunday Bacon with You

Dear Rachel,

I just wanted to write you a post about how much I miss Sunday having

pancakes and bacon with you.

Love,

Mom

My daughter and I used to have pancakes and bacon for breakfast every Sunday she spent with me, but three years ago she gave up meat, and I won’t make bacon just for myself, so I miss those breakfasts. I’ve bought her veggie sausage and bacon, and sometimes she has that, but more often it’s when we’re having breakfast for dinner than Sundays. When she was considering becoming a vegetarian it was bacon she thought she’d miss most, but it is I who misses it more. I don’t enjoy veggie bacon, and Rachel prefers veggie sausage, so on Sundays if we’re having pancakes or waffles she may have her sausages, and I’ll just skip it. But we don’t have pancakes with any regularity.

No doubt it’s better for me to skip the bi-monthly bacon, though I do make a package from time to time. I’ll cook it all up, and wrap it and use it over a few weeks, but I only do this if I’m already using the oven for something, and I have planned far enough in advance to remove the bacon from the freezer. Perhaps I could have sausage, but for some reason that defies logic, I like the sausage I get at the diner better than what I make at home, even when I make my favorite Italian sausage. (We all have our culinary quirks.)

Of course this isn’t about bacon at all. My daughter is growing up, and doing what she should be doing which is creating her own life, and engaging in activities that don’t involve me. She is busy. She is halfway through her sophomore year in high school, and when I think about her going to college I am excited for her, and interested in where she’ll go and what she’ll study, and sometimes when she isn’t looking, I cry. One morning not so long from now, she will leave my house, and though she will return from time to time, it will never be the same. As much as I want that for her, I dread it for me, and that is as selfish as wanting her to eat bacon with me on Sundays.

For now I treasure every Sunday I have with her, even if she’s only with me part of the day. We’ll still have breakfast together (most of the time).  Sometimes we cook together, or watch movies, or just talk. She has lots of questions, she always has, but I used to know all the answers, and I don’t anymore. Today we’re having pancakes together, but Rachel, I do miss sharing bacon with you.