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Last week I wrote about baking with my grandma when I was a little girl and more recently with my adult daughter. But not just any baking---a perfect pie which starts with a perfect flaky piecrust. The week before that I wrote about fishing with my dad. While working on those posts I remembered other special days and in particular one with my son. So here’s another piece from my walk down memory lane---for now---but it fits well with the other two. I think these memories are coming to me because I’m 65 and after completing The Great Photo Project of 2010 (26 photo albums, 20,000 photos, over 100 years worth of family pictures) I’ve been lost in nostalgia.
A few years ago my son mentioned he would like to learn how to bake a cake from scratch. He noticed that at work many of the women brought in beautiful homemade cakes for birthdays but that the men brought in items they picked up at the grocery store. He wanted to know why? Talk about a can of worms. “Why” indeed!
I decided not to give him a five-hour lecture on why I thought the men brought purchased goods and the women brought homemade items and instead told him I would teach him how. His birthday was right around the corner so we decided for his birthday he would bake his own birthday cake from scratch. He lives a couple of hours away but I emailed him and asked what items he had for baking. He had quite a few kitchen basics because though he hadn’t done any baking he is quite a good cook and enjoys cooking.
So for his birthday I purchased what everyone needs to bake a cake. He had nothing in the way of baking things so I filled a huge gift bag with all sorts of goodies: cake pans, flour sifter, spatulas, mixer, measuring cups and spoons (just in case), and you name it! Then I selected a decadent chocolate cake recipe with a ganache icing from the Internet and purchased all the ingredients and plopped them in the bag and hit the road. He took the time it took me to travel to his place to get his kitchen ready. (No easy task.)
I mentioned in my pie baking post last week that I’m not a baker but that I can bake cookies, scratch cakes, and a killer pie. But I have friends who could open bakery shops so my modest baking doesn’t get me very far. My first scratch cakes were awful. I remember one in particular.
I was married and we were invited to a party. I was asked to bring dessert. I had a number of cookbooks and found a nice cake recipe and made the thing and put it in a beautiful cake carrier I purchased just for that occasion and off we went. It sat on my lap and as we drove it sort of started coming to life. Remember that old horror movie in the ‘50s entitled “The Blob”? I couldn’t believe my eyes. We weren’t driving on a bumpy road and the car wasn’t overheated but I was losing my cake. Frankly, when I had finished the thing I wasn’t that impressed but I certainly didn’t think it was going to attack me. I insisted we stop at a grocery store and I ran in and bought a proper dessert and tossed the blob in the trash.
I had no idea why that happened but I think it was a number of things. Primarily I believe it was my lack of cake baking talent, because I figured out much later that it wasn’t thoroughly cooked, the icing wasn’t properly prepared, and the list goes on. Over the next few years I baked more cakes and read about cake baking and finally was able to produce a fairly decent cake.
I arrived at my son’s house with the huge bag of everything needed to bake a cake and we both decided we would tackle the project the next day, which I believe was his actual birthday. It took almost all day because we visited and discussed baking and took our time. It was a wonderful day and we ate the entire cake. Of course! Since that time he has baked more cakes and has taken them to work to share.
After thinking about these memories, including the two posts before this one, it occurred to me that these experiences were woven around specific activities but the stories were all about creating special memories with those we love. And they were so special that they stand out from many other memories. A lifetime of memories, good and bad, stay with us, but a few just sort of pop out as special. Sometimes when we create a memory task that’s difficult the memory takes on even more special intensity. It’s funny that while writing these three blogs I remember them so clearly as if they were yesterday. My mind has stored them in a “special” file.
Our cake turned out great. He did most of the work and I sat and advised. Creating a piecrust takes demonstration to get the hang of it but cake baking is more straightforward and he did great with just comments from the sidelines.
Many of my favorite memories in my life are so simple. Yes, we went to theme parks many times. Yes, we went to lots of school activities, we had many large family Christmas gatherings, and we did it all. But little odd things that we did over the years seem to hold more significance to me. I guess it really is the simple things in life that makes us happy. Spending time with a grandparent is wonderful. Spending time with my kids doing something old fashioned and basic is very special. I bet they’ll remember all those little moments instead of the times we went on vacations. I’d love to go back to the theme parks but I’d give anything to spend a day baking pies with my grandmother.
I have her wingback chair sitting in front of a sunny window in my living room. I used to see her sitting on the chair in front of a window in my mom’s house when she lived there and she would knit and crochet and read. I sit there now and do those same things and it means more to me than I can express.
Which reminds me, my daughter now knows how to knit and crochet and my son is interested in knitting scarves. I see more memories coming my way!
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