The Breakfast Club

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I'm not referring to an '80s John Hughes movie starring Emilio Estevez and Molly Ringwald. This is my 21st century version of regular Saturday or Sunday morning breakfasts with two phenomenal women. We'll call them Liz and Katie.

We started our breakfast tradition several years ago. In fact, I don't even remember when, or how it came to be a regular event. Our breakfast gatherings are probably somewhere between the trendy breakfasts Carrie Bradshaw and her crew had on Sex and the City and the Golden Girls sitting around their kitchen table. We represent three decades: 30s, 40s, and 50s.

I cherish these breakfasts. When work or family obligations take me away on consecutive weekends, I feel kind of empty and incomplete. We laugh. We cry. We simultaneously complain about and defend our siblings. We solve the world's problems if only "more people thought like we did." Imagine two hours of free therapy with eggs.

Most often you will find us at Perkins. Well, except for the time when the property manager in the group realized she had once evicted one of the waitresses. We had to temporarily find a new breakfast spot lest the waitress recognize her former property manager and spit on our food.

Phenomenal women -- that's Liz and Katie. When Liz finished her dissertation, she gave an acknowledgement to her breakfast crew. It made both Katie and me cry. If you hear me longing on a Tuesday that I wish it was the weekend, it's very possible that I'm just ready for breakfast.


'Cause I'm a woman
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That's me.

Excerpt from the poem "Phenomenal Woman" by Maya Angelou.

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