Half of A Bow Tie o’ the Day is better than none at all.
Hey, earlier this week, I posted this pic in a set of pix about Mom and Skitter, but it’s the perfect photo for what I’m writing about this morning, which is Mom and Suzanne. They have been chums from the beginning. I think they trade secrets about me, and they conspire against me—if only to keep me on the straight and narrow. I am not necessary to their conversations. They talk sewing and cooking and house decor. Blah, blah, blah. After one of Suzanne’s surgeries, I took her to Mom’s and dropped her off for a week of recovery, while I drove back up to Ogden with Rowan so he wouldn’t have to miss any school. Mom pampered Suzanne with lots of quiet and plenty of tasty food, as we knew she would. I wasn’t worried about either of them. When I picked up Suzanne at the end of the week, she was nearly healed.
One of the first times Suzanne and Mom met was in 1985. We were all in Mom’s kitchen, and Mom was concocting cookies—chocolate chip, I think. (No surprise there.) The three of us gabbed and guffawed about who-knows-what. Mom plopped the cookie dough on the baking sheet and put it in the oven. I think she even sat down with us for three or four minutes. (Mom rarely sat down in her kitchen: She ruled it and hovered around guests from a standing position, always at the ready to start cooking something else, or wash a dish.) So there we were—just the three of us chatting away in Mom’s kitchen kingdom, when Mom jumped up and screamed, “I forgot to finish putting all the flour in the cookie dough!”
She did not skip a beat. She flew to the oven, retrieved the cookie sheet, and scraped the partially baked cookies back into the mixing bowl. She folded-in the rest of the flour, then plopped the cookie dough back on the sheet, and stuck it back in the oven—hoping the treats might work out. OMGolly, if I—or anybody else—had tried to correct the same mistake the way Mom did, my cookies would have come out barely worthy of going into the trash. But Mom’s “ruined” cookies were sooooooooo yummerific. It was an impressive feat to see. I think it was right at that moment when Suzanne decided she better keep me, if only to be around Mom performing her miracles.