Turning back to the mixer, I lift the towel that serves as the mixer’s barrier against the dust of idleness. A nostalgic smell wafts up from the ceramic bowl nestled in the mixer’s turntable. It must be the fragrance of my childhood.
Memories come to me of watching my mother use mixer magic to turn ordinary eggs into white mountains for topping tangy lemon pies and plain, bitter baking chocolate into syrupy sweetness for cream-filled éclairs. The whir of the beaters under my mother’s direction folded sifted flour mixed with a cup of this and a pinch of that into thick batters that became tall, white angel food cakes, round buttery cushions for pineapple upside-down delights, sugar cookies topped with colored sprinkles, and moist bars oozing with melted chocolate chips.
On summer mornings before the Texas heat built up and the fans worked to move the last of the cool night’s air around the kitchen, my mother often did her baking. I remember one special morning, sitting just outside the kitchen listening for the thud of her wooden spoon scraping the last of the beater-whipped batter onto cookie sheets for baking and the clang of the released beaters falling into the bowl. The silence that followed meant that it was time for licking.
If my mother was generous, thick streaks of batter lined the sides of the bowl and the beaters were heavy with whatever she was mixing. That morning, after entering the kitchen and peeking around her apron-tied waist, I saw small mounds of leftover chocolate chip dough that made my mouth water and my mother licking the spoon with guilty pleasure. Fearful of losing even the tiniest nibble of this unprecedented treasure, I tugged at my mother’s apron, demanding her attention. “Ah,” she said, looking down at me. “Don’t worry. I’ve left some just for you. Would you like to lick them clean?”
Laughing at the greed that filled my eyes, she slid out a chair for me. And there we sat, side by side, me with my tongue curled around a dough-covered beater, and she with a wooden spoon and a smile stained in chocolate. Such a simple pleasure and yet such a bowl of shared happiness.
As I stand in my mother’s kitchen looking at her lined face resting on her arms, I wish for that long ago day that is earmarked in my memory. I wish to be sticky with chocolate, smothered by the protection of my mother’s love, and jealously guarded against the ravages of disease and pain. But only in our memories are we allowed a way back.
So I retrieve the recipe I found for a chocolate chip cake and begin to create a gift that I hope will bring a smile to my mother’s face. Flour and eggs, pudding and oil, a pinch of this and a dash of that. A lot of chips to make round dollops of soft melting chocolate. Then the beaters whir, mixing waves of chocolate that roll inside the ceramic bowl. Taking my mother’s spoon, I scrape the batter into the pan for baking and listen to the thud of the wooden spoon against the sides. Something makes me stop, and I look into the next room to see my mother staring at me with the touch of a smile on her face.
In the sudden silence, I see a different way back. Leaving an unprecedented amount of batter in the bowl, I loosen the beaters, letting them clang against the sides. And picking up the bowl, I turn to a mother still beautiful to me, and say, “I’ve left some just for you. Would you like to lick them clean?”
We sit side by side at the table, bent over a bowl of batter and two laden beaters, both of us with sticky fingers and smiles rimmed in chocolate. It is a bowl of happiness that I greedily share once again with my mother.
Kris Hamm Ross
The Good-Night Kiss
Four feet. Just forty-eight inches. But it might as well have been the Grand Canyon for all the difficulty my mother had in crossing that gap—the space between my little sister’s bed and mine. Each night I watched from my bed as my mother tucked in my little sister to go to sleep. I patiently waited for her to walk over to tuck me in and give me a good-night kiss. But she never did. I suppose she must have done so when I was younger, but I couldn’t remember it. I was seven now, a big girl—apparently too big for bedtime rituals. Why or when my mother stopped, I couldn’t remember. All I knew was that she tucked my little sister in each night, walked past my bed to the door, and, before she turned out the light, turned and said, “Good night.”
At school the Sisters said that whatever you ask God for at your First Holy Communion you will surely get. We were supposed to think very carefully over this, but I didn’t have to think too long to know what I was going to pray for. This was the perfect time to ask Jesus to make my mother tuck me in and kiss me good night.
The day of my First Communion drew to a close. That night, as I hung up my communion dress and got ready for bed, butterflies danced in my stomach. I knew in my heart that I was about to get the best gift of the day. When I climbed into bed, I pulled the blankets up around me, but not all the way up. I wanted to leave some for my mother to pull up. The nightly ritual began. My mother put my sister to bed, tucking the blankets around her and kissing her good night. She stood up. She walked past my bed to the doorway. She started to say, “Good night,” but then she stopped. I held my breath. This was the moment. “This was a beautiful day,” she said softly. And then she said good night and turned off the light.
I quietly cried myself to sleep.
Day after day, I waited for that prayer to be answered, but it never was. My mother’s actions taught me that sometimes God answers “no,” and though I never knew why my mother couldn’t cross that small space to kiss me good night, I eventually came to accept it.
Deep down, though, I never forgot. When I grew up and became a mother myself, I vowed that my children would always know that they were loved. Hugs and kisses were freely given in our home.
In the evening, after tucking the children in their beds upstairs, I usually went back downstairs and dozed off on the couch in the living room. My husband worked the night shift, and as a young mother, I felt safer sleeping downstairs. One night—it must have been after midnight— I was wakened by the sound of footsteps coming down the stairs. At first the footsteps were loud, and then they suddenly stopped. Whoever it was had seen me.
Finally! Now I would find out just which of my children was raiding the cookie jar during the night. No more waking to be greeted by crumbs all over the kitchen table and blank, innocent looks, in response to my accusations. Tonight the culprit would be caught!
I didn’t move, pretending to be asleep, and waited for the footsteps to resume. When they did, they were ever so gentle on each step so as not to wake me. But they were not coming down toward me anymore. They were retreating back upstairs to the bedroom. I heard a little scurrying above, then quiet footsteps again, almost imperceptible, slowly tiptoeing back down the stairs.
The steps softly came close to me, then stopped. They did not continue on into the kitchen. Smart child, this one, I thought, wants to make sure I’m really asleep. Well, I was up to the challenge. I didn’t move a hair’s breadth. I continued to breathe deeply as if I were fast asleep. I wasn’t about to play my hand too soon. I was going to catch this cookie thief in the act. I was already preparing my lecture.
Suddenly, I felt a heaviness settle on me. I didn’t move even though it caught me off guard. What was it? Then I realized that this child was putting a blanket over me.
Ever so carefully, so as not to wake me, the child covered my feet, then my arms, and finally, with the utmost care, my back. Little hands briefly touched the back of my neck and then the child bent down and, soft as a feather, gave me a loving good-night kiss.
The footsteps retreated—not to the kitchen, but back upstairs. As I cautiously looked to see who it was who had covered me, I was glad that my youngest daughter, Patricia, didn’t look back from the staircase. She would have seen her mother with tears streaming down her face.
God did give me what I asked for at my First Holy Communion. Maybe he took a little while, and maybe he didn’t answer my prayer in the way I expected, but I was satisfied. Even though my mother hadn’t known how to cross that gaping four-foot space to kiss me good night, somehow my children had learned ho
w.
Georgette Symonds
Anticipating the Empty Nest
The two most important things a parent can give a child are roots and wings.
Hodding Carter
Tomorrow is about to arrive. My first child is preparing to leave for college, and the family unit will change forever. This is not a surprise to me, and yet, I am deeply surprised by how quickly this day is speeding toward us. I’m not quite finished with her. I feel betrayed by time.
This is a happy and healthy step in the expected, and hoped for, chain of milestones. She is eager and ready to leave, but I am not nearly ready to let her go. I need to make a few more cupcakes with her, read and recite from Goodnight Moon, and maybe create one more fruit basket from Play-Doh. I want to tell her, “Wait a minute!” and have her stand still. And in that time I would hurry to fill her head with the things about life that I am afraid I forgot to tell her. But standing still, she would impatiently reply, “Yes, Mom, I know. You’ve told me.” And she would be right; but I can’t help feeling that I forgot something.
Seventeen years ago, as I stood over her crib watching her breathe, I wrote a letter to my four-day-old infant. It said, “These are the days when doorknobs are unreachable, the summer is long, and tomorrow takes forever to arrive.” In this letter I told her of the plans and dreams I had for the two of us. I promised her tea parties in winter, and tents in the spring. We would do art projects and make surprises for her daddy. And I promised her experience. We would examine sand and flowers and rocks and snowflakes. We would smell the grass, the ocean and burning wood. I would have the gift of learning about our world once again, as she absorbed it for the first time.
We experienced so much more than I promised on that night long ago. We endured many of life’s painful interruptions. When the continuity of our plans had to pause to accommodate sorrow, we grew from the shared hurt and the coping. I never promised her that all of our experiences would be happy, just that her father and I would be there with unquestioning support.
When this tomorrow is actually here, I will keep the final promise I made to my baby daughter. In the letter I told her, “I will guide you as safely as I can to the threshold of adulthood; and there, I will let you go . . . for the days quickly pass when doorknobs are unreachable, summers are long, and tomorrow takes forever to arrive.”
As I prepare to let her go, I reflect upon her first day of nursery school, when I, like countless mothers before me, said good-bye to a tearful child and went back to look in the school window a few minutes later. I needed to know if she was still crying. I believe that in September, when I leave this child at her college dorm, she will slip down to the parking lot and find me there, crying.
Seventeen years ago I watched her breathe. Tomorrow I will watch her fly.
Bonnie Feuer
Teddy Bear Tonic
It was my fortieth birthday, an event some women dread, but others celebrate. For me, it was time for my first mammogram. I always made sure I followed the guidelines for preventative health care. This year, the kind woman at my gynecologist’s office told me that it was time to add mammograms to the annual checkup.
As luck would have it, the first available appointment was on my birthday. I hesitated. After all, who wants to spend her birthday at the doctor’s office? Then I recalled some advice that I’d once heard: your birthday is a perfect reminder for annual physicals.
While I was feeling somewhat intimidated by my first mammogram, the staff made every effort to put me at ease. Just when I thought I was done, however, the nurse came in and told me they needed to repeat the films. There was a thickening, she said. Nothing to worry about though, large-breasted women sometimes needed to be repositioned.
I waited again. The nurse came back and told me that the doctor would be right in. I thought, That’s nice—the doctor takes the time to see everyone who comes in for a mammogram. It gave me a feeling of confidence.
But my confidence vanished when the doctor informed me there was a suspicious area that required further study. “Not to worry,” she said. “Everything’s fine.”
So down the hall I marched for an ultrasound. The room was dark. The doctor was serious. Trying some humor, I said, “The last time I had an ultrasound, there was a baby.”
But there was no baby this time, and soon I was asking the dreaded question. “Is it cancer?”
The doctor was noncommittal, “This concerns me,” was all she said. She suggested a biopsy. Right then and there.
I was not ready for that. My simple mammogram had turned into a six-hour marathon session. I had been shuffled back and forth for one test after another, now culminating in the biopsy.
I drove home on automatic pilot. Luckily, the doctor’s office was a mere five minutes from my house. I drove through traffic wearing my sunglasses, which hid the tears pouring from my eyes. I stifled the screams I felt rising in my gut, as I thought, I am forty years old, too young. It’s my birthday. Why is this happening to me?
Unfortunately, my three kids were already home from school when I arrived. I didn’t know how I was going to deal with this cancer scare, but one thing I did know was that I could not deal with the kids at that moment.
I had to pass through the family room to go upstairs to the sanctuary of my bedroom. Hoping the kids were completely enthralled by the television, I went through the room quickly, then ran upstairs and threw myself on the bed, unleashing all my pent-up rage and fear.
A knock on the door heralded the arrival of my oldest daughter, fourteen-year-old Robyn. I couldn’t let her in because my distress was too obvious. “I’ll be right down,” I shouted through the door.
Robyn went away, and I breathed a sigh of thanks.
It seemed just a few minutes later when the door opened. My husband, Paul, walked in, and looked on helplessly as I dissolved into a puddle. He gathered me in his arms to offer what comfort he could.
“Robyn called me. She thinks you have breast cancer,” he said simply.
How could she possibly have known? It turned out that resourceful little Robyn had not been convinced by my assurances that I was okay. She had known something was wrong when I walked through the house with my sunglasses on. Evidently the sound of my wracking sobs had scared her. (I thought I’d muffled them so that no one would hear.) Young Detective Robyn then consulted my Day-Timer and noted that I had been to the doctor’s office. Not recognizing the name of my usual physician, she looked the name up in the phone book. The large advertisement for the breast center told her all she needed to know. Fearing the worst, she called her dad at work.
I told Paul the whole story of my six-hour ordeal, and he suggested we better face the troops. Letting their suspicions grow would be worse than the truth.
We both went downstairs, and Paul lined the kids up on the couch. It was our first family summit. I cleared my throat. I can do this, I told myself.
Then I looked at the fear plastered all over the young faces of my three children: Robyn, on the brink of womanhood; John, a brave soldier, not quite twelve; and Lisa, still my baby at ten.
I couldn’t do it. Paul took over. Sitting next to me, clutching my hand, he explained very succinctly that I was having a problem. Yes, breast cancer was suspected, but we wouldn’t know until the results of the tests came back.
Robyn, so resourceful and perceptive in spotting the problem, didn’t say a word. She has always been hard to read. John was full of questions; he needed the details. Lisa cried, clinging to me.
Somehow we got through a hastily prepared dinner. It was all I could do to retain my composure. Afterwards, I made an abrupt retreat to my room.
After a while, there was a timid knock on the door. Robyn, my quiet one, entered, clutching the teddy bear she’d had since childhood. She sat down next to me on the bed and handed me the teddy bear. “He’s always made me feel better,” she said.
Such simple words, such heartfelt sentiments. My daughter was trying to comfort me in the only way sh
e knew. I opened my arms to receive the token of my daughter’s love. And yes, that teddy bear did make me feel better at the end of that long and difficult day.
During subsequent days, I traveled a tortuous road. The diagnosis was indeed cancer, but I made it through surgery, chemotherapy and radiation.
Although Robyn is now too old to give me teddy bears, Lisa, our youngest, still bestows familiar bear-shaped tokens of love on me, with pink ribbons attached.
I call it Teddy-Bear Power. It really does make everything all better.
Bonnie Walsh Davidson
The Day Mama Went on Strike
I knew something was wrong as soon as I opened my eyes that frosty Saturday morning. No one had turned up the heat for one thing. That is, Mama had not turned up the heat. And I did not smell any breakfast smells. Something was definitely wrong. So I ran to the hall, quick-switched the thermostat to sixty-five and jumped back into bed.
But I couldn’t stop wondering what was wrong. I jumped out again and went to the kitchen. Nothing. No crumbs, no coffee.
Even if it was Saturday, Mama always got up early anyway. My sister, Althea, was still asleep in our room. I knew this because no one was in the bathroom, and Althea was always either asleep or in the bathroom. That was her whole life.
So I went to look for Mama. And there she was on the living-room sofa. That’s where she always slept because we had only one bedroom. Sometimes Althea or I said, “Mama, you come on and sleep in here, and we’ll take turns sleeping on the couch,” and Mama said, “With all that giggling and snoring in there? Uh-uh. No thanks.”
Anyway, I went to look at Mama. Mama was not asleep. She was looking back at me. She was looking at me with both eyes. “Don’t bother me,” she said. “I am on strike.”
“What do you mean, Mama?”
“I mean I am on strike, girl, and you better leave me alone.” She threw back the covers. She picked up this sign, you know, like you see people on TV marching around with that say ON STRIKE.