A Morning Not Like The Others

She wakes up every morning for us. She gets out of bed, cooks breakfast, washes the dishes, gets the kids dressed for school. It all seemed to be routine day by day. My mom always is the first up in the morning, and when I come downstairs into the kitchen for breakfast, she's always there with a warm smile as she drinks her coffee and watches the news. A tall glass of orange juice sits on the counter along with pancakes or an omelette or waffles depending on the day.

One morning I walked down the stairs from my bedroom into the kitchen. I expected my mom to be there with that glass of orange juice and pancakes (my mom always makes pancakes on Monday mornings). I walked back to her bedroom to see if she was still sleeping, and surely enough there she was. I asked her if she was feeling okay because it wasn't normal for me to ever be up before her. She said she felt sick so I told her to stay in bed and that I could handle the cooking for the morning.

I turned the stove on and put the pan on the burner. I go to the cabinet and get the flour and sugar and then to the fridge to get the butter and milk. I mix it all in a bowl and pour the mix onto the hot pan. It all seems to be going well until I try to flip the pancake. The pancake was sticking to the pan and I couldn't scrape it off. Before I knew it the cooked side of the pancake turned as black as night. My mom smelled the burnt pancakes from her room and came out to see what was going on. She saw that I was having a lot of trouble. Turns out I need my mom more than I thought.