Scented Memories

I like to think that my husband and I are raising our children to be healthy, conscientious eaters, “encouraging” (read sometimes forcing) them to make food choices that will soon become habit, following them like a true and faithful friend throughout their lives. After a typical shopping excursion, our refrigerator is a veritable health food harvest, stocked to the brim with apples, yogurt, turkey, milk, fruits and vegetables. Breakfast around these parts is often oatmeal, whole grain toast, or eggs with chicken-apple sausages. My children will eat hard-boiled eggs with a smile, fruit slices without complaint, and whole grain cereal with ease, all while thinking that they’re pulling one over on me simply because their breakfast is in a bowl. I always let them think they‘ve won. But, there are those mornings that none of the above will satisfy, days when protein and fiber alone will not suffice. Those are the mornings that call for a sweet food story from days gone by, when home was your nest, and that nest smelled of pancakes.

My mother was, and still is a “family comes first” woman, who, as my brother and I were growing up, worked endless hours doing everything from stocking huge spools of yarn in a factory on the midnight till dawn shift, to working as a bank teller in a small town landmark. It would lessen her past toil and struggle to merely say she worked hard. Still, she somehow managed to make sure that my brother and I had a hot breakfast before we went off to school. While we dreamt of strawberry pop tarts, wrapped in a paper towel and devoured in the car, or Lucky Charms (mostly the marshmallows) with milk, she forced upon us all the edible love she could whip up in a pot and pan. Monday through Friday we would stumble, free of spirit, yet still foggy-eyed, into a kitchen awash with the smells of a southern breakfast made with more than a dash of a mother’s love, hope, and belief that all things were made better with bacon on the side. The 1980’s (original, not inspired) glass-top table would be set in the usual manner, and though Le Cirque had no reason for jealousy, it was always perfection to me. Paper plates were doubled up, nestled into wicker table protectors (though I think it was more to prevent leakage of butter and other goodies and less about the table), an oddly paired fork and spoon, and a glass of orange juice in a collectible plastic cup off to the side. Most days we expected, and were usually not disappointed to find a foodies fantasy palette of three strips of bacon (fried in a cast-iron skillet), fluffy scrambled eggs bathed in butter and flecked with threads of cheddar cheese, a volcanic mound of grits with too much butter pooling in the center, and a triangle of white bread (Sunbeam, of course) cheese toast. Every now and then, she would mix it up a little, surprising us with Vienna sausages and gravy atop a biscuit that would quickly collapse from the weight of milk and flour. While my mother’s gaze focused elsewhere, my brother and I would always pick out the sausage rounds and scrape the biscuit free of the lumpy, white gravy, not yet knowing what rich and fantastic joy there was in each spoonful. It would take years for us to acknowledge and regret that wasted breakfast brew.

But my favorite, the breakfast that, to this day, makes my grown-up mouth water as it did at the green age of 5, was the fluffy, endless stack of golden buttermilk pancakes that would call to me from their wicker plate protector throne. As if it were yesterday, I remember the process, down to the sweeping up of the last pools of sticky sweet syrup from the plate. It begins: I stick the fork into the pancake and watch it sigh and give way to the rigid tines of the old metal fork. The stalwart blocks of butter finally relinquish, yielding to the steam and heat, agreeing to meet in the middle, on the edges, down the sides, and pool around the bottom of the burdened white paper plate.

It is with these wonderful moments dancing around in my brain that I decide to replicate this feast for my own children, aware that they, too, are storing olfactory memories that will one day take them back home again with just a whiff of something special . I measure the perfect amounts of flour, baking powder, sugar, salt, egg, vegetable oil, and milk. I heat my newly dusted off griddle. I flick a droplet of water off my finger and onto the surface to see if it sizzles. Ready. I pour my batter and watch the bubbles rise and dance as the pancake begins to cook. I flip it and am happy to find that it is golden and perfect. As I remove my finished product, I sigh with pleasure. I can’t say that they are perfectly round. I cannot say that they are quite as fluffy as those my mother made for me. But I know that they have been made with the same amount of love that my mom added to each batch that brings back so many flavors and feelings from my childhood. I plate the pancakes with extra care, adding the crispy strips of bacon that have been cooking alongside their fluffy friends, then prepare to call down the troops. The sound of tiny footsteps tell me that the odors of my morning endeavor have reached those that live upstairs before my voice has a chance. He has dashed down the stairs, ripping himself away from some new fangled video something as soon as the invisible fingers of breakfast air curled out of the kitchen and up to his private, smells like a 6-year-old island. The little one soon follows.

She and her brother are all too thrilled to find this edible treasure replacing the usual mommy prison chow/sustenance. The pancakes appear to have a fresh coat of sweet dairy yellow paint, though one that will soon be devoured by the tow-headed, just barely a boy, kid and his little side-kick “too much like me right down to the attitude” sister sitting at the table, mouth watering, chomping at the proverbial bit. They dive in, and I am more than pleased to hear the moans and grunts of appreciation for my effort. The dining room is quiet except for the slurping sounds of my success, free of discussion, argument, breathing. When they are finished, they bring sparkling plates that look as if they have been licked clean (I don’t dare ask) to me, whispering words of hushed, full gratitude, then turn and trot off, licking their fingers. I clean up, for once not feeling “put out” for having to do dishes and wipe counters. I have shown my love for my children, my mother, my home, and my past this morning, and it was simple. Amazing what you can say with pancakes and bacon.