Beater in Hand

My grandmother grew up in the depression era.  She could concoct meals from the remnants of their predecessors, whipping up stews and soups with broken bones, meat drippings and vegetable shavings.  She would make cakes and tortes and breads with only a few ingredients. Even now she wastes nothing, saving leftovers for tomorrow’s breakfast. She’s cooked and baked all her life, and so, naturally, my mother mixed and folded along with her. Mama was never one to enjoy making a meal, though she did it with diligence, none the less. Baking has always been her forte. As a young child, I would perch myself- knees firmly planted on the kitchen chair cushion-next to my mother, dipping my hands into the gingerly sifted flour sitting in my grandmother’s bowl. A gentle look from my mother would remind me that I wasn’t to be doing that, and that the entire cloud of grain would need to be resifted.  She would measure with precision, scooping a mound of flour into the measuring cup and using the back a weathered butter knife to tap across the top, making tiny jagged mountains. A second, deliberate swipe would knock the mountains into the bowl underneath. Dry ingredients would be layered together and set aside.  She always let me crack the eggs. In a bowl my very own, I would smash the shell against its side, making a concerted effort to keep the halves intact and pour the raw egg from its home without trails of shell following. I rarely succeeded. “Try to use the shell to pick it out,” she would suggest, though it was too destroyed to be of any use. In a spoon went, chasing the pieces like a cat after a mouse.  She would laugh. Extraction complete, it was time to break the yokes. This was, and continues to be, one of my most favorite tasks, though I have no real inclination of why I enjoy it so much. Measured milk, oil or extract would be added to my bowl and I would whisk it with such vigor that it splashed against the sides and cascaded over the edge. She would laugh. The wet ingredients were added to the dry, and my mother would use an electric beater to whip the batter until it was smooth.  With a quick pull of the cord from the wall, she would release the beaters, and hand one off to her helper: a reward for all my hard work. Olivia, too, has become quite the sous-chef. She is a professional egg cracker, and prides herself in piercing the yellow pillow that’s nested in her Dora bowl.  Toddler fork in hand, she mixes and mixes and mixes with her tiny, sturdy arms, splashing Dora’s mixture onto the kitchen table. “Look Mom!”  Liv beams with pride, declaring her achievement. She makes me laugh. I’ve never employed the precision of my mother, and I don’t sift my drys. I’m resigned to the fact that I’m depriving my own daughters of the sinister pleasure of slipping a hand into that cloudy texture. But, we bake together. We laugh, and we love. We are creating the memories that mirror those from my childhood, and those of my mother and her mother before her. Liv leaves the table with flour in her hair, milk on her apron, and a childish grin on her face. And, she leaves the table with a beater in hand.

"The more that you read, the more things you will know. The more that you learn, the more places you'll go."

Technology is raising our children. I won’t let it raise mine. One of my fondest memories of childhood is bringing home a stack of books from the elementary school library, the cardstock record stamped and put to bed in its yellowed back flap. My brother and I would sprawl out on our mother’s quilt, which was a particular treat, given that we were never allowed to enter that private space.  Dr. Seuss. My mother would read Dr. Seuss; her voice would arch with the peaks and valleys necessary to barrel through the tongue twisters. Her face would brighten and darken to sorrow with the night’s story, carrying us on the journeys of Horton, the Lorax, Yertle and the Sneetches. Though Olivia, at only three, doesn’t have the patience to sit through those tales, I’ve recited My Many Colored Days so many times that I can now do it sans book. As I turn the cardboard page, she anticipates how my own voice will change: chipper pink, sullen purple, busy buzzy yellow. Her face furrows into a scowl, growling at the angry black day. The page turns: green. Her fair- almost translucent- eyebrows soften into a gentle smile and her body softens in my lap. The final page comes and she leaps off, scurrying to find another amongst the stacks and stacks of literature strewn around the house. “I wanna read this one!” “Last one, Olivia.” “That’s a great idea, Mom.” Despite the fact the bedtime is steadily approaching, and there are dishes to do and laundry put away, I welcome her back to my lap, two books in hand.

Nowhere in my memory bank do I draw on sentimental images of a plastic book “reading” to me. Nowhere did I use a stylus to tap clusters of letters producing monosyllabic sounds. A book that reads itself cannot interact, cannot emote, cannot connect. It cannot prompt discussion or fuel imagination.  It cannot promise the undivided attentions of someone else. Why, then, is this technology increasingly popular and prevalent?  Paperless books, portable DVD players, videogames for toddlers, cell phone for preschoolers, laptops for kindergarteners, VTechs and LeapFrogs fill our children’s homes and their time.  As a society we have lost the need for, and interest in, human connection.  Are we, as caregivers, too busy to read to our own children?  In this fast paced world, I worry about my future grandchildren.  Will their parents be obsolete in their lives? I certainly hope not, and I intend to give the same gift to my girls that my mother bestowed upon me: her time.

Becoming a Blogger

One of the ladies in my Mom Squad has recently started a blog. I'm inspired by her wit and humor, and so I'm jacking her idea and dappling in blogging myself. What will I blog about? My 86 year old grandmother published her first book a few years back, detailing the parallels of building a home, plank by plank and nail by nail, and raising the family that filled it with challenges and laughter.  While this blog won't have the romantic sentiments of a memoir, I love the idea of chronicling the daily what-have-yous of raising a family and building a home of my own. With the time it takes to mange my career, household, and daughters, Olivia Rian at three years and Alexa Cate at nearly 15 months, snippets of intrigue is as far as I'll ever get on my journey to becoming an author. I hope you enjoy the ride.