Chocolate Milk Mustache

“I really have to go. Breakfast is ready.”

“Ok.”

“Wait! Don’t you want to know what we’re having?”

“Yes Beth.” He doesn’t mean it. But it doesn’t matter. This is part of my Teach Dad by Example campaign.

“Local eggs, sweet potatoes, quinoa and black beans.”

“Sweet potatoes for breakfast?”

“Think outside the box, Dad!”

“I only think out of the box.”

Pause.

“I don’t even have a box.”

This is true.

“Ok. Gotta go. Oh wait, John is turning 30 on Friday!”

“Good thing you’re getting married, you’re both old.”

“You think?”

“30 was the best year of my life.” Ignoring my question.

I can hear that thing in his voice, that time-traveling tone. Both reverence and sadness for the passing away of time.

“What was so great about being 30?”

“I was single and I owned a bar!”

He says this very matter-of-factly, like this is the universally celebrated Holy Grail of “Best Year of Your Life,” requisites. If we were sitting next to each other, and not talking on the phone, he might have slapped me on the back of my head for affect.

“That was also the year you got me you know!?”

I’m his personal historian, if for no other reason to ensure my place in the story.

“Yes. That’s another reason it was the best year.”

Yeah right, but I’ll take it.

“Bye dad. I’ll call you later.”

Dad’s best year gave me one of the best days of my life. I remember exactly no more than the first hour of this fantastic day.

I wake up in my new bed, a princess waterbed (don’t laugh!) a bar patron gave Dad to help him accommodate his new roommate: his seven year-old daughter.

I dress, put my hair in the customary ponytail, brush my teeth and then poke my single, bar owning, 30 year-old, dad’s arm until he wakes up.

On the way to school—the ancient and dilapidated only public school in town—he asks if I’ve had breakfast.

We pull over at a convenient store and walk in together. Is this the first time I’ve gone alone with Dad to a store? I think so. Until this morning, I never went anywhere without my little brother and sister in tow. Things are different now. They live with mom. I live with dad.

I pick out a plastic wrapped banana-nut muffin and a pint of chocolate milk. I play it cool so he doesn’t think he’s spoiling me. Every Roberts child knows: nothing ruins a good time, in our family, like an entitled kid.

Then, Dad does the coolest thing anyone has ever done in the history of cool things: he drives around the school block (twice!) to give me time to finish eating my giant muffin.

I hop out of the pickup truck just as the other kids are filing into the red brick building.

It’s the first morning I’ve ever walked into Roosevelt Elementary donning a chocolate milk mustache over a smile.

For this second grader, best days come easy but not often.