A Sweet and Sticky Sixteenth Birthday Breakfast (Memoir Final Revision)

When I open my eyes, I can feel the water moving below me. I get the sensation that I am floating. It is quiet. I can smell the subtle trace of brewed coffee and I feel the gentle ushering of a breeze on my face as it slips in through the back door. For a moment, I breathe it all in. Rays of sunlight wash over the room. I listen to the clap of water against the rocky shore and the gentle waves rolling in and out of the little cove, rocking the boat back and forth.

I let the blankets slip away as I sit up and stretch. The aroma of coffee is stronger now. My feet find the cool tiled surface of the floor. I stare out the broad windows of the houseboat at the shining, gossamer waves of Lake Powell. It is vast enough to be mistaken for the sea. A maze of rock juts out of the water far off into the distance. Like a sky at sunset, the rock’s many layers reveal the depth of the water year after year in soft pinks, rustic reds and oranges.

Inside the houseboat, there is one small bedroom that my parents share and a bath that one passes on the way to the back deck. My sister and I sleep in the breakfast nook, which is towards the front of the boat. The deep corner booth table unfolds into a bed that is ideal for sleeping in late, with its spacious cushions and fort-like feel. The kitchen is at the heart of the boat. It is a cohesive space; open enough for me to see everything from where I stand near the breakfast nook.

My eyes spot the gleam of the coffee pot, next to the stove. Sand clings to my bare feet as I pad across the room. It is a comfort. A coffee cup waits for me, set aside by someone who truly understands love. I lift the pot from its cradle, feeling the gentle pull and slosh of its contents: half a pot more.

Clasping the cup with both hands, I hold it close, watching the steam spiral upward. I breathe in deeply, taking in the rich, bold contours of flavor. I feel the room dissolve as I raise the cup and the warm liquid rushes towards my lips. The world comes back into focus, sharper this time. It is not the caffeine kicking in so soon, but rather my deep contentment spreading from my stomach outward.

I peer out the glass doors of the front deck, facing the shore. The sand is quiet and untouched. I pause and listen, soon hearing the soft murmur of conversation winding its way to me from the back deck of the boat. The door is open a crack; my dog watches me as I approach. Immediately I feel the heat of the wooden deck on my toes as I move into the sunlight, my skin prickling from the sudden change of temperature. It’s a good day to swim.

“Happy birthday!” They holler, bursting out of their chairs. Grinning, my dad opens his arms to me and gives my organs a good squeeze before kissing my cheek. Daisy, my yellow lab, has kisses for me too. My sister winks at me and laughs as my mom gets that look in her eye, and gives me a hug and a kiss before making a beeline for the kitchen. We all know she’s disappeared to get tissues, under the pretense of cooking breakfast. It’s one of the consequences of being the baby in the family. When I settle into her abandoned chair, I hear the tinkle of M&M’s dropping into a bowl and I smile. M&M pancakes—my sixteenth birthday request.

My dad perched on a cooler, my sister and I in folding chairs, chat about past birthday years. We laugh about the time my sister dropped her princess cake in her lap when she was holding it for a picture. After performing a little plastic surgery on it, my mom cut the cake, the plastic princess figurines still smeared with chocolate frosting.

Sipping my coffee, I listen to my dad tell stories about his own childhood, while watching the water ripple like melting glass. He tells the story of him breaking his arm while messing with a tractor when he was sixteen, and the one about him and his cousin foolishly dropping a bee hive and running, before the swarm caught up with them. I look up at the porcelain-fired sky, painted like the color of a robin’s eggs, speckled with sunlight, and feel entirely at ease.

When the pancakes come, they are glorious. My mom appears at the back door with a plate in hand.

“Here you go, birthday girl,” she says, opening the screen door and handing it to me.

I smile to myself when I see the number sixteen written on my pancake, made of colorful, melting M&Ms. The pancake itself is admirable. Golden brown and perfectly round, I can tell it will be fluffy. It takes a special talent to wield a spatula in hand and flip a pancake at precisely the right moment. For years I sat, perched on the countertop and wearing my pajamas, watching my mom pour pancake batter into a pan and cook five, sometimes six pancakes in a row without burning a single one.

She taught me how to tell when a pancake is ready to flip, by watching the air bubbles in the batter spiral inward until they reached the center. One time, when I poured too much batter in the pan and got ready to flip it, the half-cooked pancake wobbled on the spatula and sadly, with a turn of my wrist, it only made it hallway into the pan. Trial and error, my mother would always say when we were cooking together.

My dad takes our empty coffee cups and disappears into the kitchen to refill them. He comes back just in time for my first bite, holding one cup with creamer and the other without. I take the darker one and hand the other cup to my sister. Now I am ready. With a little syrup and a great appetite, I take my first bite. It is warm and light enough to dissolve in my mouth, with a melting gooey inside as freckled as my face. I love the sticky flood of syrup and that feeling of being made whole again as the pancake grows smaller, and I grow fuller, bite-by-bite. It is something to savor. Leaving a pool of syrup behind, I lick the chocolate paste from my fork and settle back into my chair, fully satisfied.

Closing my eyes, I soak up the sun and think about how it is moments like this that we let slip by, unacknowledged. Later on, these moments resurface in our lives in the form of nostalgia, and become something that we both cherish and deeply long to return to.

The memory of my sixteenth birthday will always be connected to the dawning of a new phase in my life, as I try to imagine what a Michigan winter will be like, and all that I will learn at Kalamazoo College. The anticipation of it is exciting and scary all at once, and I know that everything is on the verge of changing. I open my eyes and reach for my coffee cup. My dog is sprawled at my feet, panting slightly. She looks up at me, tail wagging on the deck. My mom and dad are talking about going to Rainbow Bridge tomorrow if the weather is nice and my sister is braiding her hair. My face feels warm from the sun and I smile, taking it all in, and knowing that the memory of this day will be turn out to be the greatest birthday gift of all.