How a Standing Breakfast Date Became the Most Important Thing on My Calendar

I’m writing this fresh off this morning’s breakfast. Still in that warm, post-coffee glow that I always carry home with me. I’ve been meaning to write this post for a while, and this morning finally pushed me over the edge. So here we are.

A few years ago, I noticed something. Our kids, who had been the glue holding a certain circle of friendships together, were getting older. High school was going to be wrapping up. University was looming. Life was about to shift, and I could see it coming from a mile away. The rhythm of school assemblies, plays, and sports sidelines, the rhythm that kept dropping us into the same room at the same time, that was going to stop. And with it, I knew, would go a lot of the natural, organic connection that we’d all come to rely on.

So I did something about it before it disappeared.

A Simple Idea: Breakfast

I proposed a standing monthly breakfast to a small group of women I’d come to absolutely adore. Women I’d met because our kids happened to go to the same school, and who I’d clicked with in that way you don’t take for granted. You know the click I mean. The one where the humour lines up. Where you can say the thing you’re actually thinking, or ask the embarrassing questions. Where nobody’s performing.

The idea was simple: the second Tuesday of every month, 9am, breakfast. Same day, every month, no scheduling. That part matters more than people initially realized. When I first floated it, I don’t think everyone fully grasped why the standing date was the whole point. But they get it now. There’s no group text in October trying to find a date in November that works for five women with jobs and families and lives. The date is already there. It’s already in everyone’s calendar. It has been, and will be, for the foreseeable future. You schedule your life around it, not the other way around.

If someone can’t make it, the rest of us go anyway. That was a deliberate decision and a good one. Life happens. Kids need us unexpectedly. Parents get sick. Work goes sideways. We understand all of it, and we genuinely hate to miss it, but we don’t let an absence cancel the whole thing. The tradition doesn’t break just because one of us isn’t there. You can’t let it.

We rotate through a small list of local restaurants, always within ten minutes. Decent food, enough table space, and a Tuesday morning crowd that isn’t going to make you feel guilty for lingering. No hovering waitstaff. No lineup at the door. Nobody’s waiting for your seat. You can actually sit and talk, and unpack your feelings if needed.

Variety Is The Spice of Life

We’re a wildly different group on paper. I come from a background in corporate technology. One of the others is a former teacher. One is a dentist. One runs a successful business with her husband. On paper, nothing obvious connects us. In practice, that mix is exactly what makes the conversation good. There’s always a different frame on the same problem. Someone’s always had an experience that nobody else has had. Someone can always relate to something in a way you didn’t expect.

Over the past couple of years, two of us have gone through the sickness and loss of our mothers. It was a lot. And having a group of women who knew us well enough to hold that, who could offer both the emotional support and the practical kind (what questions to ask, what to watch for, what to expect), that was something I couldn’t have easily obtained nor replaced. There’s a particular comfort in talking to people who are close enough to care but not so deep inside your situation that they’re managing their own feelings about it at the same time. We’ve been that for each other.

This morning, we were about halfway through breakfast when one of the women stopped mid-conversation. She said how much this meant to her. How much she always looked forward to it. How lucky we all were to have each other. And I watched the other women nod, and tear up, and then I teared up. It didn’t surprise me. I knew, in the way I always know on the drive home when my cup is full, that this breakfast is genuinely special. Special in the sense that it fills something that nothing else quite fills.

The GAAGAs

We call ourselves The GAAGAs. Don’t ask me to explain it; it would take too long and its truly only amusing to us. A partial acronym from the kids’ school, combined with an autocorrect incident, and a vague reference to Lady Gaga. It makes no sense to anyone outside the five of us, which is exactly as it should be. It’s ours.

Every time I tell other women about The GAAGAs, I see the same thing on their faces. Their face immediately lights up with a keen interest, and a kind of wistful recognition. “That’s such a good idea”, “I need to do that”, and “How do you all keep it going?”. The answer, every time, is the standing date. Put it in the calendar and don’t negotiate it. That’s it. That is the whole secret.

I started this because I saw what was coming and I didn’t want to lose something I valued. Years later, I’m sitting in my car after breakfast with a full cup and wet eyes, and I genuinely don’t think I appreciated how much this would matter when I first set it up. None of us did.

A couple of hours. Once a month. Five women and somewhere that serves a decent cup of coffee. If you have people in your life who fill your cup, put it in the calendar. Pick a standing date and protect it like it matters. Because it will.

Do you have a standing date with friends? Tell me about it in the comments below.

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