Attitude of Gratitude - Denny’s

My son, Andrew, treated me to breakfast this morning. It was such a thoughtful gesture.. He graduated high school earlier this year and is still figuring out what path he wants to take.. college, work, military… It’s been a challenging time for him (and us), so when he asked to take me to breakfast, I had a feeling he had stuff on his mind and I knew exactly where we would be going for breakfast. We went to 'our spot', Denny's. Yes, Denny’s.. you know.. the diner that you would go to after the school dance because it was the only restaurant open at 1am. It was that way when I was in highschool and it was the same for my kids.

6 years ago, when my kids transitioned from being homeschooled to going to public school with RUSD, but before we moved to Redlands, I would drop Tannis off at REV and have an hour to spend with Andrew before dropping him off at Clement. Driving from San Bernardino to Redlands to get the kids to school was taxing, both in time and money and I was faced with the very scary thought of uprooting my family and business to Redlands, since that is where the kids were going to school. Since I hadn’t made the decision yet, I was stuck with this daily routine of finding things to do with my son. One option was walking in the park near his school, but frankly, I was exhausted and stressed and all my 13 year old boy wanted to do was eat, but eating out was terribly expensive, and not in our budget.

Denny’s to the rescue!

Many mornings were spent at Denny's, filling him up on $4 all-you-can-eat-pancakes. Our waitress got to know us very well, and often would bring his next plate of pancakes before he even asked. Some days, it was a $2 stack for him and for me with change we found in the couch or underneath the seats in my car. We were going thru so much back then with my husband’s addiction and me trying to keep us all together, while trying to run a business. I often thought it would never get better and this was the best we could hope for. All I knew then was to put one foot in front of the other.. it HAD to get better if I could just get thru this decision, this next meal, this day. But one thing I remember clearly was that I was grateful for that time with him and for those pancakes. We talked about our fears and worries over melting butter and sticky syrup. We committed to putting down our phones, but occasionally would laugh over some vines videos (remember those 6 second videos?) when we didn’t have the energy to talk. When life is difficult, it is sometimes hard to see the silver lining, but there it was.. in a stack of pancakes…we were sharing food and fears and getting thru these rough moments together. All these years later, he could have picked any number of restaurants this morning, but he chose Denny’s.. our place!

Today, I had cobb salad with steak for breakfast and he had the Grand Slam.. we've come a long way since those early days of short stacks paid for with scrounged pocket change but the gratitude for our time together has never changed, and thankfully, all these years later, Denny’s hasn’t changed either!

Show a picture or it didn’t happen, right? Well, I tried to take a photo today, but I didn’t want to spoil the good vibes going on between us.. I did, however, go thru a bajillion old iphone photos and found these two. I’m sure there are more, but I didn’t have time to really go thru a bajillion images. Side note: I really need a better system to organize personal iphone images..

What are you grateful for today? I’d love to read your comments.

💜