I’ve never been much of a morning person, my insomnia making early afternoon a preferable wake up time, but I fondly remember weekend mornings stirred from my bed by the smell of my parents’ cooking. Saturdays and Sundays were meant for late mornings, often with Mom at the stove and Dad returning from a bakery or patisserie with treats in hand. When I reflect on those mornings gone by, a warm feeling settles in my chest. What love to know someone is waiting for you when you wake up.

My favorite breakfasts were when Mom would cook up potatoes and eggs with either sausage or bacon, all cooked up in a cast iron skillet. The smell of sautéing onions would rise up from the pan laid atop the flame. The aroma and sound of sizzling would set my stomach to rumble, reminding me what such a late wake up time did my hunger no favors. Just as I loved falling asleep to the soft sounds of rainfall, I loved waking up to the sound of something sizzling in the pan echoing down the hall. 

In grade school, Dad would bring us swan pastries on many a Saturday morning. As long as I’ve lived (and surely longer), I’ve never known my father to sleep in. Always awake before 7am, I still marvel at his internal clock—and remain thankful mine seems set to 11am most days. These swan treats were cream puffs filled with a light, whip-cream like filling, dusted with powdered sugar. The top was made to look like feathered wings, a delicate swan neck and head arising from the front of the pastry. It was one of the most beautiful desserts I’ve ever seen—and to this day my favorite pastry. He would get them from a French Vietnamese bakery by the name of Lan Vin. At the time when my dad would stop there on those Saturday mornings, their storefront was still in SE Portland, not very far from our neighborhood. The bakery eventually moved locations to NE Portland, in the same building as Pho Oregon. This is the storefront I became familiar with in high school. I was always so excited when I saw that pink box on the counter. It was my favorite part of Saturdays back then, and I found myself anticipating the treats once the week restarted. 

These days, breakfast usually happens in a rush. My insomnia still has me cutting it close to when I need to leave for work, often only giving myself 30 minutes to eat. But on the weekends, breakfast remains a slow affair. I usually don’t start cooking until past noon. I’ll stumble out in an old t-shirt of my dad’s that falls almost to my knees, socks and slippers on my feet, and start on my morning ritual.

The motions of cooking are peaceful, reminding me of those calm mornings of childhood. I sometimes wonder if nostalgia tints those days rosier than they were, but I know the memory of my emotions is a truer recount than my memory of events, so I lay that worry to rest. Dressed in my dad’s shirt as I stand over the stove as I often saw Mom do, I find myself caught between the past and present once again. An echo of my parents lingers in my kitchen, a step behind me in ghostly figures as I meander my way around the counters and stoves. A funny thing, how the living can haunt as the dead do. Perhaps memory is really some strange land where life and death exist just the same, unable to tell each other apart.