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.