Gratitude - Friday morning breakfast...

I think my favorite hour each week is Friday breakfast. Almost every Friday morning for the last six years, Mom has had fresh coffee, rolls and cereal ready for me at 6:30. It started when she sold the homestead and moved to town. I was riding my bike within a hundred yards of her back door every day to and from work, and it was pretty easy to turn that into a cup of coffee and a couple of rolls.

Our time together is unhurried and relaxed. Sometimes we're silent, but usually we're covering everything from family history and lore, to politics, to theology, to the latest gossip. Usually she has a couple of computer questions, or I help her check her investment account or order a book online.  Sometimes she asks me for advice. Sometimes she has advice for me. The conversation ebbs and flows. A lot of the stories that I'm sharing here come from that table.

What I've experienced is a kind of support and blessing and wisdom that I never imagined possible.

Tonight (Thursday) I asked her if she wanted me to come again in the morning. She said, "Of course, I have some rolls in the freezer yet. But you may have  to help me get it on the table."

That raises a curiosity. I've never asked her to teach me to make her rolls. It never seemed right. But will the recipe die with her? Should I spend a day getting her to talk me through a batch? Could that possibly be enough to absorb a lifetime of experience making those rolls? Will I ever make them again after she is gone? Or should I leave it, and then spend the rest of my life trying to recreate them, and never quite  get them right? (Which is, I think, what my Dad would have done.)

So I'll go tomorrow, wondering if this will be the last time she can host me.  I think that is what it means to face loss: wondering when the last time will be.

In the meantime, I tell myself "I am a lucky man."