The Café Vanellas

2: on breakfast

// Toriv

I like to make a big deal out of breakfast. Most important meal of the day, to use the cliché. But more importantly, it's your first chance in the day to say hello to the people you love. To me, breaking the nighttime fast applies to people too.

Maybe that makes me a sap, but I like it, so whatever, I'm a sap. To pick up Freud again (and this is the last time I will, I swear), it probably stems from childhood too. My mom used to have to get up really early for work, "at the asscrack of dawn", as she'd say when my dad was out of earshot. As a kid I'd miss her at breakfast, so I learned to get up at the asscrack of dawn too, just so I could sit at the table with her and drink my juice and tell her about all the stuff I planned to do during the day. I was that kind of kid, always talking, always drawing attention. Like I thought that if the grownups' attention faltered for even a second, I'd die or just stop existing. I guess it's an only child's kind of mentality. Not to say that I was spoiled, far from it. Hard to be spoiled when you have my dad for a dad, or my mom for a mom, for that matter. But I did grow used to having them for myself.

Anyway, breakfast. Breakfast is my favourite meal ever. I could live off of breakfast food, which sounds gross and weird to some people but hey, more midnight pancakes for me. Breakfast is awesome because it can be anything you want it to be -- savoury or sweet, heavy or light -- and it's still breakfast. It's the most versatile meal in the day, the greatest thing since sliced bread, especially when it is sliced bread.

Back when I still lived with my parents (eons ago, if you must know), I used to make them breakfast most mornings. My mom likes sweet breakfast and my dad likes salty, so I'd always make a bit of both to make everyone happy. I also learned exactly how my parents like their coffee and would make it for them every time, and to perfection, thank you very much. Then we would sit down to eat and discuss the coming day's activities, and my mom would tell me to knock 'em dead, and my dad would tell me to not get into trouble (again), and I would tell them sure thing, Mom, and when do I ever get into trouble, Dad, honestly.

So all that to say, I'm not really used to having breakfast on my own. It was the weirdest thing ever, actually, once I started living in my own place. Most mornings, I'd go over to my parents' house anyway, just as they were getting up, and make them breakfast just like old times. They never told me not to do it. I think they kind of knew it was something I had to do, at least until I had gotten used to being all on my lonesome.

I'm better at dealing with it these days, thanks for asking. I'm a big boy now, I eat my scrambled eggs alone and everything. Except when I'm not.

These days, when I make breakfast for someone, it's usually a guy. The ones who stay the night, anyway, and I usually ask them to stay the night. It's just nicer that way, even if the sex is only so-so. So-so lovers deserve breakfast too, that's my philosophy.

It's trickier to make breakfast for a near-stranger, though. For my parents or for my friends, it's easy to guess what they'd like on any given day. For a guy you only met the previous night, you can't really guess, unless you happened to have a discussion on preferred breakfast foods in between making out and undoing buttons. So you've gotta ask, which is fine, but sometimes the guy will get awkward, or impatient, or confused, and then you're stuck standing there with the question floating between the two of you like a ghost. I swear some people get weirder about what would you like for breakfast? than they do about the STD question.

But I ask because I like to do it, because the rewards usually outbalance the weirdness. Even if I'm never going to see them again, I like to send people off with a full belly and a smile. That's just how it is: when the people around me are happy, I'm usually happy too. I'm a simple guy with simple pleasures.