Mom invited me to come up to her house this weekend. She still
lives on the place where I grew up and it’s the setting for so many of the memories
that I write about. I’ve announced several times that I’m going to start
spending more time up there, and I’ve made the trip several times this year,
but it still seems like a long time between visits. One of my sisters and her
family are coming up from Kentucky, so Mom wants the rest of us to come, too. “I’ll
make some food” was the last line of her text. Well, that sealed the deal! I
imagine, with some of the aches and pains that she has, that cooking and baking
are exhausting efforts for her. But I know she enjoys it.
Mom has always been a dedicated homemaker. For many years she
spent a large part of each day in her kitchen cooking breakfast, dinner and
supper for her husband and four or five kids. She was our alarm clock. We would
often wake up to her soprano serenade. She’d be singing a hymn, and old standard
or even a classic show tune as she cooked breakfast. And sometimes, later in
the day, she would bake cookies, a pie or even a cake.
Every cake Mom made was an expression of her love for her
family, but her birthday cakes were the best of all! She would let the birthday kid pick what kind
of cake they wanted. Then she’d go to the store and get the right cake mix if
she didn’t already have one in the cabinet. And she’d make sure she had plenty
of powdered sugar on hand, because a Birthday Cake called for a big batch of
frosting.
Us kids would be drawn to her presence in the kitchen by the
sweet smell of a cake baking. “Don’t bump the oven!” she would sternly warn us,
as our kinetic friction would escalate. Her second or third admonishment and
her eventual threat to ban us from her kitchen would usually be enough to settle
us down a little. We knew that eventually there would be a bowl of frosting and
we didn’t want to miss out on that.
As the cake cooled on the counter, Mom would take her small
mixing bowl from its place in the cabinet and, with her native intuition, add
the four ingredients required for chocolate frosting: butter, powdered sugar, cocoa
from the brown tin with the little round lid, and milk. These were precious
commodities in her kitchen and she doled them out judiciously, being especially
careful with the milk. She’d splash a little out of the jug into the bowl and
if, “oops!”, too much came out she’d have to add a little more of the other
ingredients. That didn’t happen very often. When the rich, sweet confection was
just the right consistency and the cakes were cool, she would begin spreading on
the frosting.
The first big gob went right on top of the cake. Mom had the
rapt attention of her eager little brood as she turned the cake back and forth
on the counter, picking up a little frosting from a thick place to spread over
the thin places, until all the bare spots were covered up. She’d dig more out
of the bowl to spread around the sides until the whole thing was lavished in a
layer of rich home-made frosting. “Who wants to scrape the bowl?” was the
question her audience was waiting for. All this was high drama at our house
when we were kids.
Then came the good part. Mom would dig deep into the bottom cabinet
for her special frosting tool with its clever little plunger and the variety of
interchangeable tips. Then she had to make another batch of regular frosting for the decorations. “I
hope we’ve got enough food coloring!” she’d say. But those tiny little bottles
seemed to last forever.
She was always a little nervous then, as she loaded the
fancy frosting into her decorating tool. “Now don’t bump me”, she’d warn us as
she spelled out a birthday wish and made little curlicues all around the top
edge of her creation. And nothing says “I love you” more than a Happy Birthday wish
and the name of her birthday child in flowing cursive frosting font. “Let’s see
if we’ve got some sprinkles”, she’d say from her tip-toes as she peered into
the top cupboard.
How great is the love
the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called the children of God!
And that is what we are! (I John 3:1 NIV)
