Just you wait...

A new era and its reward, plus a recipe

It’s light outside. 

This is my first thought as my eyelids lift.  

It’s light outside! The thought echoes with emphasis. Since we’re still in winter, this means one thing: I’ve slept a long time. Who even am I now?!

I’ve been a mother for twenty-three years. Jayna, my oldest, was almost sixteen when I had Annalee, my youngest. The closest age gap between any of my kids is three-and-a-half years. A TSA agent once asked me why as I lined up for security with all my kids at the Honolulu airport: why did I have my kids so far apart? I don’t even remember how I answered this deeply personal question, but the shortest answer is, it just happened that way. Having my first at twenty meant that I wasn’t in a rush to have all my babies at once. Right when one was getting to the stage where they went from “toddler” to “preschooler,” or from “I need Mom all the time,” to “I can do it MYSELF!!!,” I got pregnant and started over. 

And even if I never said, “This is how I plan to have my kids,” I liked it. I had time to treasure the littlest years as much as I could. Even when I had my last, my fifth child, as crazy as it sounds, I wasn’t sure I was ready for that to be the end of it. 

“I always dreamed of having kids,” I once told my husband. It’s true, and that dream was a huge part of what saved my life in my darkest days. “But in those dreams, they were always little kids or babies. I didn’t dream about the time after.”

He nodded and said, “But you had to know they’d grow up, right?” 

“Yeah,” I admitted, “I just didn’t dream of it. So… I guess I’m saying, it just feels weird.”

It did feel weird, and added to that were the voices in my head of all the knowing parents who warned me about the older years, who spoke in ominous tones, “Just you wait…”  

Now I have two twenty-somethings, a teen, a middle schooler, and a kid in elementary. And, finally, I get to sleep in (well, past 7 anyway) on the weekends. It feels amazing!

I stretch happily under the blankets and look over at Matt. He’s turned the other way, but the slow tempo of his breathing tells me he’s not awake yet. From downstairs, the kitchen, I hear clattering in the sink. I’m not the first one awake! They let me sleep so long! Breathing in, I notice the air smells lightly sweet. Curiosity and hunger pull me out of bed and beckon me to the kitchen. As I descend the stairs in my pajamas and slippers that are a tired shade of white, the sweet aroma grows stronger.

“What’s going on here?” I ask in a sleepy voice. Wyatt and Annalee are sitting at the table with plates of thick, steaming waffles in front of them while Lilly bustles between the counter and the kitchen island. 

“Good morning!” Lilly says, looking up with a smile. My brother-in-law once joked that if you could somehow distill the essence of Lilly, there would be no need for coffee or antidepressants. “I made waffles!” 

“Wow…” I say in complete awe.

It’s not that my kids never made breakfast for me before. Every Mother’s Day and most birthdays, I’m treated to elaborate trays of baked goods and fresh fruit and tea in bed. But I’m pretty sure this is the first time I’ve woken up on such an ordinary Saturday to find a delicious meal waiting for me.

“Try them!” Lilly insists. “They’re really good!” 

She’s not wrong. “Really good” is an understatement: they’re actually perfect. I savor each mouthful and realize this is it. I’ve officially entered a new phase of motherhood. There’s no name for it–at least not one that I know–but it’s the phase that comes after the last of the little years. A phase of sleeping in and still getting a delicious breakfast. These waffles are my award, the trophy for finally reaching this point.

With each bite, I mentally thank those who brought me here to this glorious moment of triumph. 

I’m grateful for the dreams of these people, because even as ephemeral as daydreams are, they somehow turned into real, interesting, and funny humans. 

I’d like to thank my mother for her pancake recipe. That recipe is what started Pancake Saturdays all those years ago, when Jayna and Skyler were tiny. I modified it, and made it my own, substituting bananas for the eggs and using non-dairy milk. Sometimes kids who stayed the night thought they were weird because they weren’t Bisquick pancakes, and bluntly said as much, leaving my daughters crushed and mortified. But as they grew up and moved away, they asked for the recipe, too, and made their own adjustments to it. Because by then they knew the truth: Pancake Saturday was another way I told them, “I love you.” Wherever we were in the world, whoever they called friends, when the pans came out and the bananas were mashed and the pancakes piled up on the plates, my kids knew the truth. I loved them, and this fact would never change.

And you know what? I’m grateful, too, for all the sleepless nights that preceded so many of those Pancake Saturdays, and the sticky fingers that followed them, because they made me see what a precious gift it is to rest and to have kids who can cut their own food and wash their own hands without being told. 

I’d like to thank the wild hair, that crazy idea Lilly had followed by the insistence (so typical of her) that we buy another waffle machine despite me saying we didn’t need another single-use kitchen appliance. (*Our first waffle maker met a tragic end seven years ago in Busan when I miscalculated the voltage of the transformer. RIP waffle maker, RIP transformer. Hashtag expat life. Hashtag IYKYK.) I’d like to thank her for not stopping when I said, “But I make pancakes on Saturdays,” as if that were a rule carved in stone. I’m so glad she replied, “Yeah, but I really want waffles.” I’m so grateful for her persistence, too, in finding and perfecting a recipe of her own. 

“Just you wait,” I want to say to all the moms still in the little years. Except my words won’t be steeped in doom or intended to send shivers down anyone’s spine. Of course there’s so much I loved and treasured and will miss. And of course I have new worries pressing in, even if they aren’t that someone is going to stick their fingers into sockets while I’m in the shower. But after nine hours of sleep, with a mouthful of perfectly sweet, fluffy waffle, I’m thankful that my daydreams couldn’t possibly come up with this.

“Just you wait until the next part comes. It’s delicious.”

And now, a recipe for the pancakes. I can’t give you one for the waffles. That is, for now anyway, all Lilly’s.

********************

Joy’s Banana Pancakes

2 cups of non-dairy milk (Feel free to use dairy if you prefer; the original recipe called for it. But this is an easy switch and a delicious recipe if you have dairy issues.)

½ cup of old-fashioned oats

1 T apple cider vinegar

1 T oil (I usually use avocado)

1-2 mashed ripe bananas

2 cups all-purpose flour

2 teaspoons baking powder

1 teaspoon baking soda

Pour the oats into the milk to soak. Mix the milk, apple cider vinegar, oil and bananas together. Mix the dry ingredients. Pour wet ingredients into dry ingredients and stir until completely mixed. Scoop into hot, greased griddle or pan and cook until bubbles on the edges stay open, then turn.

This post is part of a blog hop with Exhale—an online community of women pursuing creativity alongside motherhood, led by the writing team behind Coffee + Crumbs. Click here to view the next post in the series "Acceptance Speech".