Yes, Soup.

This is not a phase.

Now that I’m on Spring Break, I’ve realized something important was missing.

My breakfast.

Not in a tragic, “oh no, I forgot to eat” way. In a spiritual absence way. Because in the chaos of my morning classroom, there is exactly one small, perfect constant that protects me from the students asleep on their desks, AirPods fully committed to their own private concert: the sunshine of a perfectly warmed mug of tomato soup.

Yes, soup.

Breakfast, as a concept, is wildly overengineered. Eggs, cereal, protein, productivity, performative wellness. It’s all very ambitious for a time of day when I am, at best, partially human.

Soup says: You are alive. Let’s proceed gently.

Let’s not pretend we’re operating under strict culinary law here. We’ve all embraced our inner college students and accepted cold pizza as a breakfast food. We’ve already crossed the line. We live here now.

But when Spring Break arrives, and the need for an immediate, no-brainer breakfast disappears, so does the perfect mug of creamy, comforting tomato soup. No soup. No mug. No quiet, savory anchor holding the morning together.

Tomato soup in a mug (specifically a mug, because I am not plating anything before 9 a.m., and from a distance it still passes as coffee) is the ideal compromise between nourishment and not being asked to prove anything.

And now, without the classroom, without the rush… I forgot it.

It turns out the soup wasn’t just breakfast. It was infrastructure.

So, while Spring Break is for rest and recovery, it’s also been a life lesson for me, as I finally understand that my emotional support breakfast has been tomato soup all along.