Pancake Love

This morning’s breakfast.

I love pancakes. Two circles of doughy, warmness fill my belly and satisfy me like no other breakfast.  I like them slathered with melted butter and sprinkled generously with white sugar. (Syrup makes them soggy and, well, the taste of maple – yuck.)  When we go out for breakfast, I order crepes or omelets or eggs benedict, but here in our home, nearly every morning around 10 o’clock, Karl says to me “What would you like for breakfast?”  It’s a game we play.  He asks, then I stammer and pretend to consider before I answer, “Pancakes!”

I truly do love the taste of pancakes. I appreciate how they ‘stick to my ribs’ and carry me through the next hours. But more than anything, I love what they say.  HUH? Yes, pancakes at this house speak loudly.  They impart Truth. In reality, Karl likes pancakes, but he likes fried potatoes and bacon or sausage with fried eggs more.  Much more.  Despite this, on an average of four mornings a week, he asks what I want, I say pancakes, and he makes them.  Every morning when I sit down at the table and inhale the sweet aroma of those pancakes, I also listen to the sweet message they croon to me.  That message, of course, is that Karl loves me.

I say the magic three words to Karl quite regularly. In contrast, he doesn’t say them nearly as often (except a kind “I love you, too” in response to my frequent declarations – which really doesn’t count as him actually saying it!).  In fact, we’ve had serious discussions about that very marital issue.  I even went so far once as to set a goal for him to actually say the three magic words, unprompted, three different times each day.  I’ll give him credit, he did try to meet his goal. But that was before I began listening to the pancakes.

Now, I understand the language of pancakes, and understand what he means when he doesn’t fry potatoes each morning.  I also have learned to understand sweat (like when he is hot and tired from doing some project I’ve asked him to help me with – usually after interrupting something he was doing), and patience (when he doesn’t just bean me for being bossy or duct tape my mouth when I don’t shut up when he’s watching a movie). I will admit it, though: while I am fluent in English and tell him often that I love him, I am not as eloquent in the language of actions as he is.  But I’m learning.  In fact, I’ve set myself a goal to actually show Karl how much he means to me three times every day without using words!