The sun swept across the dashboard as I pulled out onto the open road with a bag of groceries tucked safely into the passenger seat. Precious cargo.
It was hot today, but the good kind of hot. Specifically the beautiful, late-June East Hamptons kind of hot. It was weather like this that always had us heading to our summer home every year for Holland’s birthday.
Which was exactly what we were celebrating today.
“Strawberries? Chocolate chips?” Daniel asked, still firing off guesses from the backseat as to what the secret ingredient was.
I smiled at him through the rearview mirror. “No. But that sounds pretty good,” I admitted.
“Umm. French toast?” he guessed.
I laughed. “That’s what we’re making,” I reminded him. “We’re trying to guess Mommy’s secret ingredient right now.”
“But maybe I’m right, because you can’t make French toast without French toast,” Daniel pointed out, to which I nodded.
“Solid point,” I conceded, grinning to myself as I wondered if my four-year-old was spending too much time with his Uncle Adam, because he definitely had some Adam tendencies here and there.
But when he wasn’t being silly and joking, he was more often than not like Holland. Careful and observant. Thoughtful and sweet. Eager to make people smile.
He was, after all, the one who suggested we try the birthday French toast again, since he’d heard from Mommy all about the times Daddy tried and… maybe didn’t quite succeed.
My first attempt at it was about seven years ago, the first of Holland’s birthdays that we’d spent as a couple. We had rented a house in Venice Beach with Adam, A.J and the Maddoxes, and Adam turned the kitchen into such a madhouse of toys for Kai that I wound up getting distracted and burning the French toast.
I would have tried again the following year, but Holland and I were in Baia do Sancho after spending a week with my mom in Saõ Paulo, and there was entirely too much soft sand and turquoise water for us to think about cooking.
Then there was a period of time when Holland asked me—as gently as she could, but with a very teasing smile—to please just stop.
“Trust me when I say that I’d rather wake up to you in bed on the morning of my birthday,” she said, laughing endlessly at my reaction. “Besides, I think maybe it’s time for us to start our own birthday tradition,” she had smirked.
And that had been easy enough. Though it didn’t differ too much from what we did every other morning. The only difference was a special set of lacy white lingerie she’d wear to bed the prior night, that I wasn’t allowed to remove in any way. It all had to wait until the morning.
Which basically meant that the new birthday tradition was a very solid amount of torture for me—the exact kind that Holland had always enjoyed putting me through. And as much as it genuinely tormented me, it would be lie to say that I didn’t enjoy the hell out of it.
So for awhile, the birthday French toast was forgotten.
But then Daniel was born, and when he turned two, Holland started making it again.
I had watched her do it last year, but I’d been so busy chasing my son around that I missed the part with the secret ingredient. What she’d added that first year she made it for me in my kitchen, before we were even really dating.
“It’s a secret,” she had grinned. “And by that I mean the answer is right in front of you. You just have to look.”
Eight years later and I was still so stumped I was trying to have my four-year-old help me out, but somewhere in the middle of us rushing to get the meal together before Holland woke up, Daniel reminded me to juice the oranges, and I realized exactly what ingredient had always been there.
The oranges. In particular, the zest.
I couldn’t stop burying kisses in Daniel’s soft hair after I took the first bite of the finished product and realized we’d nailed it. We high fived about ten times in a row, but shortly after sharing that triumphant moment, my son got cocky on me.
“That was pretty obvious, Daddy,” he decided as we headed upstairs, and I could only laugh, because in fairness, he was right.
It was right in front of me the whole time. It had just taken me entirely too long to figure it out.
“You did it, baby,” Holland teased me later that day, after the counter and the dishes had been cleaned, and Daniel was drawing on his stomach right below where we sat on the couch.
“Only took me eight years,” I smirked as she snuggled next to me with her head on my chest. I felt her take a deep breath and sigh with content.
“Well, you know. Better late than never,” she said simply.
And again, she was right.