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Originally uploaded by jippyjabber.

Pancakes sweet pancakes.

I love taking Zachary out to breakfast.
I get coffee served to me and I can't tell you how much I drink it's just constant.
Our journey to pancakes is far reaching. It started across the Pudget Sound from Seattle. He was still a toddler.
Zach was diagnosed with infantile autism. He screamed from the day he was born until he was about three years old.
He developed out of order. He actually walked at 7 months old. He ran at 7 months old. He had no balance so he ran from one place to another. He crashed a lot. It was disturbing seeing such a young baby moving like that. I knew something was really wrong and so did his doctors.

I put him immediately in an infant program through the March of Dimes. I went with him everyday starting in the class room with him and eventually wound up behind the two way mirrored window. I sat back there wishing hard that I had a cup of coffee. It took me long enough to get out of the classroom and into that little box of a room. Coffee would have been nice. And then one day I figured out how to get myself a cup of joe. In there behind the wall on a time out sized chair. It took some strategic planning. That is how I knew we would one day get to go out for pancakes.

I took Zachary to a coffee shop walked in and turned around and left. I did smell the coffee though. Success!

I started out thinking Sunday pancakes would be nice but I decided to change it to wednesdays and then it turned out that both days were needed every week. Because getting to pancakes, it would take us minutes at a time.

We would enter the retsarant and leave. Next time we would enter the restarant, put our name on the list, they called out to me, I'd apologize and leave.

Eventually we took a seat. The waitress was catching on to us. The next time she saw me she got me right into the same seat time after time. Making friends with the waitress is cruical. She would seat us, I would look at the coffee and then leave. One day I got a sip of the coffee. Another day I actually ordered the pancakes. I stayed the course to be there when the pancakes arrived. The Pancakes that would one day lead to a full cup of joe for me. Moms know that about pancakes, that eventually, with some planning, they lead to a full cup of joe.

ONe day we stayed long enough to get served pancakes!
Zach finally saw what the whole routine was all about. He was too over stressed to stay and eat. That was OK. It was a little tiny bit easier coming back the next time.
One day I drank half a cup of coffee and cut up the pancakes.
Oh so close. so so very close.
Then we did it. We got a few bites of pancakes in!

What a wonderful day. A glorious day. A day of promises. I saw us lunching with my sister and friends and branching out from coffee shop pancakes. I didn't know how far off in the distance that day would be.

Four years later I am living in Pasadena with Zach.

We are in a coffee shop. The waitress and I are staring Zachary down.
Just staring him down, waiting and waiting.
Then it came like a tiny little blip on the radar screen. It could have been so easily missed.
"Pancakes please."
He said it. He said, "Pancakes please"
I am crying and I look at the waitress and she is crying.
It's the first time I have ever heard his voice she says to me.
Now I am laughing and crying.

She goes crying off to the kitchen and every now and then someone would stop by and say,
Hey. Zach how are those pancakes?
He'd say, " Pancakes." And take another bite.
Mom takes another sip of coffee and thinks,
Oh Pancakes, sweet pancakes.