My friend in New Jersey, who visits home from a few towns away pretty often, told me once when I was over there, at his old childhood house, that he eats the best breakfasts when he’s home. At my apartment? Maybe a grab and go thing like yogurt. Maybe nothing? At home? Cereal, bacon, breakfast sandwiches, oatmeal.

I find I do the same thing—though when we visit my parents, my mom still makes breakfast for us most mornings. Most weekdays here in our house in Northern Virginia, I don’t eat anything until dinner. If I break that, it’s a single egg for breakfast, and maybe a mini sandwich with one slice of bread cut in half and a few slices of deli meat or something.

I’ve been doing this now approaching two years, I think. I just got tired of stopping work to eat and then feeling thirsty and sleepy for the rest of the day. My friend does this too—we both feel being a little hungry during the day keeps you sharp and awake. And dinner is so satisfying, and you don’t have to eat as much to feel full.

But back in New Jersey, I’ll ask for bacon, and sometimes I’ll make buttered toast. I’ll make my old favorite—a spaghetti omelet—if we had spaghetti and meatballs the other night. Sometimes we’ll have bagels. I’ll go buy a bunch of cold cuts and make simple Italian subs for lunch. And then dinner, and then dessert. At home, I barely have dessert. Maybe two or three bites of ice cream, or some plain yogurt. With my parents, I’ll have a slice of pie or cake or something and then a bowl of ice cream.

At home, I’m pretty disciplined about snacking. I’ll feel like grabbing a slice of salami from the fridge or a few potato chips or something, and I’ll immediately counter myself, nah, I don’t need it, skip it. I literally can’t even tell how much I want the snack, honestly. Back at my parents, I’ll wander into the kitchen at 3pm and have a little slice of each of the deli meats in the fridge, look in the pantry for anything interesting, see if there are still any meatballs from the other night.

I don’t even think about any of it. It feels completely natural. Whatever reticence or discipline I feel in my own home about casually doing these things just disappears when I’m back in my childhood home. It’s like I’m picking up some older version of myself, almost, that only exists in that space.

I wonder what’s going on here—this funny thing where you don’t eat a nice breakfast or lunch in your own house but do at your parents’. Where the bounty of having your own house and fridge no longer feels that way? Is it maturity? Is it isolation? I didn’t always feel this. I remember one morning several years ago, back when I lived in my grad school apartment, stopping by wife’s apartment (she lived below me in the same building, and wasn’t my wife yet) and grabbing something I’d forgotten before work and then slicing a couple of slices of salami from a stick I’d just bought. It didn’t feel inappropriate to eat a salty, savory food at 7:30 in the morning. It was kind of fun and delightful and serendipitous. I think at some point I started to think mature adults do less of that. Is that true?

What got me thinking about this was our most recent trip up to New Jersey, where we stayed with my parents for the week and then—for my first time ever—took the train into New York City to stay overnight (I’ve been to New York of course, but never stayed overnight and have never gone in by train except in college). We were meeting a friend of my wife’s who was in the city and had invited us to meet her and her husband.

It was a really fun trip—I’ll be doing a much longer piece about New York and cities and America and housing and all that—but what I noticed was that being around so much stuff was invigorating. You see a $.99 pizza shop and you think, hey, I could get pizza at midnight. You see museums and grand libraries and realize you can just kind of go in on the spot/off the cuff.

I’ve been writing about this lately, but I thought again, is what I’ve assumed is maturity or growing up or even starting to get older just being too far from most things to do anything impromptu? And that that distant, spread-out, plan-everything-in-detail-ahead-of-time suburban lifestyle has rewired my ability to do things to the point where I apply that attitude to grabbing a bite out of the fridge? To everything?

I’m curious, in particular from anyone else in that late-20s/early-30s age bracket, if any of this rings true. And if you feel like the speed with which you can access shopping/food/activities is really a big part of it.

Related Reading:

Inflated Expectations

Home From Italy, Thank God

Iconic Hometown Restaurant, Obsolete Dining Concept?

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