Forget Valentine’s Day- I Have a Date Every Week!

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My Lunch date 1

Forget Valentine’s Day. I have a standing date every week. We’re not very exciting, we go to the same place, eat the same meals and sit in the same spot. Every week, without fail. Some people may not consider it very exciting, but it works for us.

My standing date is my son.

My wonderful, fantastic, loved-more-than-he-knows, son. Every Friday I join him in the school cafeteria with Burger King. He likes a Whopper (now that he’s big), with cheese and bacon (hold anything that might be considered a vegetable!!), onion rings, coke, and a Hershey’s Sundae Pie. Every week. I don’t even ask anymore, and he doesn’t try to tell me. He knows that I’m going to show up with just what he wants.

When it comes to my kids, I believe “quality time”, a special event or trip is great every now and then, but I like plain old boring non-quality time too. Pizza on Fridays, game nights on Saturdays, Mom in the stands at your game and a once a week lunch date in the cafeteria. Sometimes I think those add up more in a lifetime. Or at least the few years that my kids will want to spend with me.

I think when the day comes that he tells me it’s time to stop coming I’m going to have a very long cry.

I thought that day had come when he entered Middle School. I didn’t want him to get made fun of by other kids when his mom showed up and sat with him in the cafeteria. So I stopped coming. For the first time in years, I didn’t have my Friday date lunch. I missed it. But I knew that it was the right thing. Middle School is hard enough, I didn’t want to add to it. “Is that your MOM??” You can just hear it…

But I forgot the wonderful inner sensitivity of this particular boy. That he really enjoyed spending that special time with me. Or the Burger King.

Or maybe it’s the baby brother that he gets to show off at the lunch table to his peers. The fun, social kid who has never met a stranger and loves everything that his big brother does.

Who knows really.

Do I care? Nope!

So when he asked me to start coming again I was there in a heartbeat. My time is running out. Fast. Pretty soon I’ll be in the dreaded “can you drop me off a block away” years. When the little face that lights up as he yells “mom!”, has become the aggravated expression and eye-roll accompanying the groaned “mo-om!”. It’s coming. I’ve got one in that stage already. It’s not pretty.

So, for as long as he’ll let me, I’m going to keep showing up on Friday. With my basket of his favorite food. I’ll keep showing up on Friday in the school cafeteria chasing after the baby brother that wants to run away, saying really inappropriate things the big boys have taught him, and I’m going to smile and take it all in-grateful that I’ve got one more little chance to spend some time with this wonderful boy I get to call mine.

If you look real hard, you can figure out which ones are mine.....
If you look real hard, you can figure out which ones are mine…..
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Kristin, Senior Writer
Once Upon A Time, in another life, Kristin graduated from the University of Michigan with a plan to teach high school math. But then, life happened when she wasn’t looking…. She married an Army guy and 23 years, 3 kids, a few dogs, 7 homes, and 2 continents later she’s now a single mom living here in Colorado Springs. Along the way she volunteered for the Army, Girl Scouts, Boy Scouts, and several schools; managed volunteer organizations, coached judo, trained to be a whitewater rafting guide, biked down Pike’s Peak and even managed to teach some high schoolers a little math before forging new trails writing, teaching and financial planning. She never knows what’s coming around the bend, but she’s learned to handle whatever life (and the Army!), throws at her with a smile and a laugh. She’s pretty sure you can get through anything with those, even if you have to fake it occasionally!!