The kitchen smelled like… well, it was hard to tell. Something buttery? Something… slightly burnt? Mom stood at the stove, humming a tune that had switched keys three times, flipping pancakes with a spatula that was suspiciously sticky.

“Oh, you’re up!”

she beamed, as if you hadn’t been sitting at the table for five minutes.

“I made your favorite—banana pancakes! Well, sort of. We didn’t have bananas, so I used those slightly squishy pears from the fruit bowl. And I think I grabbed the salt instead of sugar at one point, but we’ll just call it gourmet, right?”

She slid a lumpy, golden-brown something onto your plate, looking so proud that you almost didn’t mention the fact she’d placed the frying pan on top of an oven mitt that was now gently smoldering.