Mondays are hard: this is a fact.

F is never much of a morning person before 7:30 am, which is a problem because we need to leave the house before 8 am. Ideally, I’d like to be at work between 7:30 and 8 am, but this isn’t a perfect world and I’ve accepted that F eating breakfast is 10 times more important than me being the first one in the office. (I might feel differently if I didn’t work for the most amazing, flexible, understanding company ever. Being 10mins late is OK.)

Because I refuse to be an hour late (and because it was 7:25 am and F was still yawning in bed), I asked if he’d like to go out for dinner tonight. He enthusiastically said yes, and I told him we could go out under two circumstances: the first was that he get ready for preschool, and the second was that I hear a good report from his teacher before we walked home that evening. And these two things happened.

Before picking F up, I ran just under 4 km and we walked our 2 km walk home together. We drove to McDonald’s, went inside and ordered our meals. We ate mostly in silence as F wasn’t feeling talkative. I didn’t push it: F being quiet is a rarity, and sometimes we all need that bit of quiet. Even Chatty Cathys like F. Once he’d finished his Happy Meal, we hopped in the car and started for home. Guilty for wrecking my run, and for eating a Big Mac, I felt crappy as I turned my left indicator on to turn back onto the main street.

“Thanks for being a really great, Mama. I’m so glad you took me on this date,” F piped up in the backseat. “I love you, Mama.”

Overwhelmed with awesome, enormous love-y feels, my eyes started to well up with tears. My voice cracked a little as I told F how much I loved him. My guilty feelings lifted as I remembered how important the 45-minutes we spent together were in the grand scheme of things… and how tiny that Big Mac is at the end of the day.