I took my husband out for Father’s Day to the Testy Chef Cafe in Maple Valley. There wasn’t a kid in sight. Going out for breakfast together with just the two of us is not a particularly unusual activity. However, this time the waitress asked where the kids were. I guess because it was Father’s Day.I sighed, “They’re growing up and off doing their own thing today.”
Then I realized we’d been going to the Testy Chef since it first opened in 1994 before we even had kids. There we were, out to breakfast, just husband and wife, at our favorite breakfast joint, without kids, not because we didn’t have any, but because they were grown up. The circle of life is complete.
Well, it’s not totally complete with one daughter still in high school, the other now 20 years old, living on her own, but moving home in the fall (at least that was the plan last I heard). We are also still very much alive and kicking, our health is good, and God help us, we’re not going anywhere for a while yet. But you get the picture. It was a surreal moment when we thought back over the last 21 years of our lives having breakfast at the Testy Chef Cafe.
It goes so fast. Who’d have thought when we were sitting in that little cafe with our toddlers on our way to cut down a Christmas tree, that we’d be sitting there 16 to 18 years later talking about it? It’s one of those times you wish you’d have stopped, soaked in the moment and remembered it better. I do have a picture from that day: my little girls sitting in their chairs on their knees so they could reach the table, bundled up like bunnies in their winter sweaters and boots with their bright pink rain slickers hung over the backs of their chairs.
Cutting down the tree was not as momentous of an event for my daughters as going to that Cafe and having hot chocolate topped with a large blob of whipped cream and a dash of chocolate sauce and sprinkles to boot. In fact, we never repeated the Christmas tree activity. My kids were not then and are not now outdoorsy and voiced their misery over being out in the elements of nature, even as toddlers.
However it was not their last hot chocolate at the Testy Chef. Most of the time when we go out to breakfast we go there. It’s our place. We were there in the beginning and we still go there to this day. The staff has watched our kids grow up, us get older, and time move on.
By now all of you are probably humming the tune “Circle of Life.” It’s from the Lion King, written by Elton John. Here’s the refrain:
In the circle of life
It’s the wheel of fortune
It’s the leap of faith
It’s the band of hope
Till we find our place
On the path unwinding
In the circle, the circle of life
It really is a circle, because as my husband and I were finding our path way back when we were a young, married couple, we are now watching our children find their paths and take those leaps of faith. We are certainly not washed up, we’re not that old yet (at least I’m not), and twenty years old or not, my daughters still need a lot of support while they navigate their own directions in life.
Still, it was rather poignant that on Father’s Day, we were having breakfast at a place where we had breakfast before my husband was a father. So what does it all mean? Just that we’re getting older – at least he is – it’s the circle of life.
