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How’s Your Parfait, Asshole?
By Stephanie Kemp
How’s Your Parfait, Asshole?
By Stephanie Kemp
I fucking hate the weekday mornings, currently.
This makes me (extra) sad because usually the mornings are the only part of the weekdays that I love. (although “love” might be a little strong)…
The only part of the day that I can control.
Eggs!
Milk!
Fruit!
Napkins!
Homemade lunches and refilled water bottles!
Guaranteed sunrise!
My kids are safe and no-one is being an asshole to them!
You see, I have two teenaged girls.
And a husband who snores (sometimes - I should add, because: A. It’s true and B. I still love him and mostly want to stay married).
I also have a menopausal body antagonistically paired with a mind still swimming in the glory of our thirties.
Do you want to come over for breakfast?
But enough about me…
Back to the parfait.
This morning (a Monday in February) was extra hateful because we are all over crisped from two years of a pandemic, too many social plans for some of us and not enough for others, last night’s extra glutenous extravaganza of fried rice, chicken lettuce cups and chocolate chow mein noodles over vanilla bean ice cream and a token slice of asian pear with a dead bug in the bottom of one of our bowls. (My cousin was in town - this is not how we usually roll.) Thankfully the dead bug landed in one of my daughter’s bowls.
There is also some really hard teenaged friend stuff happening at the moment. The worst kind. The best friend kind. The there is no villain kind. The kind that life just feels like it needs to hand deliver or shit onto your stoop every once in a while to rock you to the core.
And by “you to the core” I mean “me to the core,” because something happens when your kid is sad. (This applies to both high school and middle school sad - they are equally awful…plus my daughters’ identifies must be protected.)
You want to fix it. Change it. Solve it. Move through it for them.
Punch someone.
Pay someone.
Move to a new town.
But of course, you can’t do any of those things.
So, instead, you get sucked back into the vortex of the awful dramas that you successfully or narrowly dodged yourself all those years ago, or (worse!) back into the middle of something you realize now that you never actually escaped.
And that terrible something is, in this new moment, somehow 5000000000 times worse because it is happening to your kid.
This morning (not to mention my game face) was so bad that my kid (you know, the one actually living the hard time) tried to make ME feel better and said, “Mom? You deserve a special breakfast. Like a parfait or something!”
It took me a minute to realize:
Now do you want to come over for breakfast?
But here is the real kicker, and the reason any of this feels like it was worth (?) writing down:
As the four of us sat silently and Monday like at the counter eating our separate breakfasts (cheerios, dip in the eggs, scallion pancake with hoisin sauce, a goddamn parfait), my sweet daughter asked, “How’s your parfait, asshole?”
My parfait came out through my nose as I realized that she would be fine and that I no longer needed to teach her anything ever again and we could now move into a whole new phase of nonchalant catch as catch can weekday mornings (and life!) now that we had arrived at this point of inner strength and verbal ballsiness.
Everyone stared at me like I was crazy (and/or just looked disgusting with yogurt now in all the wrong places), as she said, “What? How is your parfait, as a whole?”
I missed (and misinterpreted) everything.
I am not in control no matter what I make everyone for breakfast.
I can’t live this for her, but she will sort it out because she is her own kind of strong.
Fair.
Kind.
Ready.
Ready.
ps. Just as I was about to end this gem on a witty note about the “pre-dawn possibilities of Tuesday!”, I realized that today is actually Friday, not Monday, and that my kids can (and should) steer much more than their weekday mornings.
As for me? I am going back to eggs…
…and then I am going to take a nap and figure out how to take down this fucking pandemic.
This makes me (extra) sad because usually the mornings are the only part of the weekdays that I love. (although “love” might be a little strong)…
The only part of the day that I can control.
Eggs!
Milk!
Fruit!
Napkins!
Homemade lunches and refilled water bottles!
Guaranteed sunrise!
My kids are safe and no-one is being an asshole to them!
You see, I have two teenaged girls.
And a husband who snores (sometimes - I should add, because: A. It’s true and B. I still love him and mostly want to stay married).
I also have a menopausal body antagonistically paired with a mind still swimming in the glory of our thirties.
Do you want to come over for breakfast?
But enough about me…
Back to the parfait.
This morning (a Monday in February) was extra hateful because we are all over crisped from two years of a pandemic, too many social plans for some of us and not enough for others, last night’s extra glutenous extravaganza of fried rice, chicken lettuce cups and chocolate chow mein noodles over vanilla bean ice cream and a token slice of asian pear with a dead bug in the bottom of one of our bowls. (My cousin was in town - this is not how we usually roll.) Thankfully the dead bug landed in one of my daughter’s bowls.
There is also some really hard teenaged friend stuff happening at the moment. The worst kind. The best friend kind. The there is no villain kind. The kind that life just feels like it needs to hand deliver or shit onto your stoop every once in a while to rock you to the core.
And by “you to the core” I mean “me to the core,” because something happens when your kid is sad. (This applies to both high school and middle school sad - they are equally awful…plus my daughters’ identifies must be protected.)
You want to fix it. Change it. Solve it. Move through it for them.
Punch someone.
Pay someone.
Move to a new town.
But of course, you can’t do any of those things.
So, instead, you get sucked back into the vortex of the awful dramas that you successfully or narrowly dodged yourself all those years ago, or (worse!) back into the middle of something you realize now that you never actually escaped.
And that terrible something is, in this new moment, somehow 5000000000 times worse because it is happening to your kid.
This morning (not to mention my game face) was so bad that my kid (you know, the one actually living the hard time) tried to make ME feel better and said, “Mom? You deserve a special breakfast. Like a parfait or something!”
It took me a minute to realize:
- what a parfait is.
- that we had the ingredients to make one (yogurt, honey, granola, plus a pretty cup, but minus the berries).
- that I would much rather have an egg but would eat the fucking parfait in the hope that it might make her feel better if I appreciated her suggestion enough to take it.
Now do you want to come over for breakfast?
But here is the real kicker, and the reason any of this feels like it was worth (?) writing down:
As the four of us sat silently and Monday like at the counter eating our separate breakfasts (cheerios, dip in the eggs, scallion pancake with hoisin sauce, a goddamn parfait), my sweet daughter asked, “How’s your parfait, asshole?”
My parfait came out through my nose as I realized that she would be fine and that I no longer needed to teach her anything ever again and we could now move into a whole new phase of nonchalant catch as catch can weekday mornings (and life!) now that we had arrived at this point of inner strength and verbal ballsiness.
Everyone stared at me like I was crazy (and/or just looked disgusting with yogurt now in all the wrong places), as she said, “What? How is your parfait, as a whole?”
I missed (and misinterpreted) everything.
I am not in control no matter what I make everyone for breakfast.
I can’t live this for her, but she will sort it out because she is her own kind of strong.
Fair.
Kind.
Ready.
Ready.
ps. Just as I was about to end this gem on a witty note about the “pre-dawn possibilities of Tuesday!”, I realized that today is actually Friday, not Monday, and that my kids can (and should) steer much more than their weekday mornings.
As for me? I am going back to eggs…
…and then I am going to take a nap and figure out how to take down this fucking pandemic.