Jean-Marie Francois Du Shaino

It's no secret within our marriage that I do not have a stellar record when it comes to celebrating special days. Birthdays, anniversaries, Valentine's Day, Mother's Day...I've even botched a Christmas or two. So as this Mother's Day drew closer, it filled me with a sense of impending doom.

After analyzing the problem at length, I realized it was not that I don't care. It's not even that I'm lazy (always a factor). It's more that I don't set a realistic goal, start planning early, and then quietly endure to the end. A classic blunder is to try and keep everything a secret intead of enlisted Kaddi's help and advice on the things I can't do. Another is that I can tend to get too excited and can sometimes ruin the entire production out of childish enthusiasm. (There was also an...incident...involving last Mother's Day and a certain Howie Mandel game show, about which those who participated are sworn to secrecy.)

Since we are in Thailand this year, I decided early on to play it safe. Kaddi has often talked about wanting to enjoy breakfast in bed. But I'm a Fulbright scholar, not a French chef. For eleven years the mystery of how to make pancakes, waffles, French toast...really, anything where you have to do more than empty a box into boiling water - has eluded me. This year I decided that no sacrifice was too great for a wife who has lived the past few months in Thailand. I summoned up all my courage, got out a pencil and a notebook, sat down at the table, and asked Kaddi to teach me how to make French Toast.

It was then that I learned one of life's immutable secrets: French Toast is nothing more than bread soaked in egg batter and placed in a frying pan. How is it that I can recite the basic tenets of the Equal Rights Ammendment but I didn't know this?

So the next morning I woke early and began preparing breakfast. Meg was indispensable in the process (it's not hard to get her excited about French Toast). She knew that the egg batter should have cinnamon in it, and that Mom doesn't drink regular milk in Thailand, but that chocolate milk is okay. Jake's contribution involved crawling out of his own bed and into ours. I think Kaddi was excited about the breakfast, but even more excited about the prospect of future possibilities of having me make a French Toast breakfast for the kids while she sleeps in.

Curse my pursuit of culinary excellence!