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My typical breakfast needs to take place in 3 minutes.
Pour coffee into thermos. Add cream. Peel hard boiled egg. Go.
But not in the summer. In the summer, I don’t have to leave the house by 6:50am. In the summer, we linger over breakfast, sometimes for hours. Summer breakfast takes at least 45 and most likely 90 minutes. It involves pour after pour of coffee refills for mom while The Girl peels multiple eggs or digs into yogurt. It’s leisurely and lazy. And it is heaven to a mom who usually has to DO more before 7am than she would like to do.
Last summer, The Girl and I started our annual road trip tradition, and this is where I discovered the 90 minute breakfast. Posted up at a camp table with nothing firm on the to-do list until dinner time, I found myself sipping cup after cup using this amazing Outdoors JavaDrip Coffee Maker which keeps the coffee warm for hours after you’ve poured it. With nothing to do but sip, I spent my mornings looking out at the trees and sighing to myself about the wonder of doing nothing. I was so enamored with the event that I photographed many a breakfast table, capturing my best view of my best summers. It just so happens that these images show so much about our lives: our friends, her ever-changing quirks, and my ubiquitous coffee.
There was the amazing moment somewhere near Asheville when my 3 year old and I each opened our books and read silently at the breakfast table. For several minutes. With no interruptions. Toddler moms out there, I know you see me.
And then there were the lazy mornings at a campsite table, wet or dry, with our Coleman Butane Stove, dark roast coffee, and heavy cream. Watercolor paints, yogurt, blueberries, and Care Bears.
Here we have her first drawings that were actually representational. This was at a diner in Hot Springs, Arkansas at 6:45am after a very long night. I was just awake enough to be delighted in her butterfly, swimming pool, “someone walking,” and pelican.
Some of my favorite breakfasts are those with friends. This one catalogues an epic Durham breakfast with Meredith. She brought local honey and jam plus homemade bread. We brought the illustrations.
A year later, another amazing North Carolina breakfast (now in Hillsborough) with Meredith’s eggs and jam. This time we’re freshfrom visiting Carl Sandburg’s National Park Site in Flat Rock, NC.
A year later, mom can do a crossword while the Care Bears (and Hillary) frolic with a paper airplane and the watercolors. This time, in Northern Georgia and a dry enough morning to linger for hours.
Another lovely breakfast with friends, this time with Kaycee in Jupiter, NC. Fresh cherries, NYT crossword, Care Bears, Pete the Cat sticker book, and Union’s bottle.
Each of these pictures shows me just what choices we made when we had time to spare and no where to go. For a set of gals with a daily tally of accomplishments and the joyful making of lists, these breakfasts represent a breath of something fresher. Regular, normal, mundane. Pure heaven.
