Part One: The Saturdays That Belonged to Us
For the first five years of my daughter’s life, Saturday mornings belonged to only two people.
Emma and me.
We never called it a tradition at first. Traditions sounded planned and formal, like holiday dinners or family photographs where everyone wore matching clothes. Ours began with nothing more than a bowl of pancake batter and a little girl who believed ordinary pancakes were boring.
“They need shapes, Mommy,” Emma had announced one morning when she was barely three.
After that, every Saturday became an adventure.
We made stars, hearts, dinosaurs, flowers, and animals that rarely resembled the creatures they were supposed to be. Once, Emma insisted that a badly misshapen pancake was a giraffe.
I tilted my head, trying to see it.
“It looks more like a potato wearing sunglasses,” I said.
Emma planted both hands on her hips.
“It’s a giraffe with personality.”
I laughed so hard that syrup nearly spilled across the table.
She laughed with me until she slid sideways in her chair, her curls bouncing around her face.
Those mornings were never perfect.
There was always flour on the floor, syrup on the counter, and at least one pancake burned beyond recognition. But they were ours.
My phone remained silent.
The laundry could wait.
Bills, errands, worries, and the rest of the world stayed outside our kitchen for a few precious hours.
Emma called them our “Mom and Me Days.”
When she was four, she came home from preschool one rainy afternoon carrying two bracelets made from brightly colored plastic beads. One was small enough for her wrist. The other was stretched much larger.
“I made them match,” she said proudly.
She carefully pushed the larger bracelet over my hand and then held up her own wrist beside mine.
The beads were uneven, and the letters were slightly crooked, but together they spelled:
MOM + ME.
“So everybody will know,” she explained.
“Know what?”
She stared at me as if the answer should have been obvious.
“That we’re each other’s favorite people.”
My throat tightened.
“I think everyone already knows that.”
“But now they can see it.”
From that day forward, every Saturday began with the same little ceremony.
Bracelets first.
Pancakes second.
Everything else afterward.
For years, Emma and I had been enough for each other.
Then Matthew entered our lives.
