When I was a kid, my dad made blueberry waffles every Sunday morning. While mom got us girls all dressed and brushed and combed and pretty for church, he would mix up the batter, cook batch after batch on the ancient waffle maker (one he and my mom got for a wedding present in 1974), mix together blueberries and sugar and cornstarch and heat them until they were the perfect sweet, syrupy concoction. Then we'd all sit down for a morning feast before heading off to church together.

I don't remember anything in particular that anyone said at any of those Sunday morning breakfasts, but I remember being there, Mom and Dad and Cheryl and I, all together around the table every week.

And then years went by, and my sister and I became teenagers. We spent the night at other friends' houses, or we stayed up late watching movies and giggling with our friends over bowls of popcorn and gallons of Coke and Mountain Dew. When Sunday mornings came, we slept in, rising just in time to throw on some clothes and slump into the back seat of the car.

Dad still made waffles and blueberry sauce every Sunday, but they just sat there, growing colder and colder on the table, and after he ate his share he would carefully wrap them up and put them in the refrigerator, where they would sit for a few more days until eventually someone threw away the remainders.

Finally, he stopped making waffles and blueberry sauce on Sunday mornings.

It wasn't that big a deal, at the time. We weren't rejecting our parents or forsaking our family. We were good kids, and we just liked to sleep in.

But looking back--when I think of my dad, who is a man of few words, caring for us in this sweet and tangible way--I want to take teenager-me and shake her for letting those beautiful waffles grow cold, for letting dad sit and eat them alone.

Love is a gift, something that families choose to give each other every day. And no one, not even a privileged middle-class teenager, secure in her parents' unending care for her, should take it for granted.