Food Writing Observation

She cracks the eggs with the enthusiasm only a child could muster; she is, after all, a child. She flips eggs but is disappointed that pieces stick to the pan. She has a lot to learn about cooking: patience, experimentation, timing. I will regale her with tales of my early days – when sunny-side up became over-easy and then over-medium and finally scrambled eggs because I lacked that virtue known as patience. This may be my finest educational challenge yet, to teach what I once did not know to my daughter. She doesn’t understand why she can’t take the turkey bacon by hand from the skillet and eat it right away. She is precocious; she is seven. Meet Bethany.

He greets an invitation to help in the kitchen the way I have always approached a baseball game – unbridled thrill ricocheting from a boy like scrapple being shuffled inside a hot pan. He willfully does what he can to pitch in; fills measuring cups, brings milk from downstairs. He spreads butter on toast and adds piles of brown-sugar cinnamon, then passes the butter-crisp treat to all who are seated around the table. He is eager to please. This is Brian, he is ten, and he has the knack for becoming a cook. (How cool is that?) He didn’t get it from me.

She whips up French toast batter as her mom taught her and contributes in the way of a mature pre-teen. She will help spread sauces, leaven bread, pre-heat the stove. She will stir the home-fries, check the sausage gravy and recently made her own non-breakfast side-dish. She ignored the box directions that I rely upon yet the bow-tie-garlic-alfredo noodles went well with lunch. How does she do that? Instinct, I suppose. Her best ability seems to be mixing tuna. As it slicks into a gooey, oozy goop of mayonnaise and slivers of pinkish-tanish meat, I cringe. Tuna, yuck. I am glad she likes it but grateful it isn’t for breakfast. She is our oldest at twelve; she is Becca. Neat kid.

I stumble through various ideas, experiment here, repeat an easy favorite there, and often misplace the spatula...somewhere. I am absent-minded in the kitchen. I juggle through preparing breakfast and look left, then right, then back again wondering where I set anything from the flipper to the butter to the salt to the batter. I need the boxes that provide specifics but have recently treated myself and the family to daring new recipes spurred by the teachings of a class and the artist-of-another-trade figuring things out in a whole new medium. My name is Dan, 41, the dad of the house. Nice to meet you.

She makes magic – in the kitchen and in a lot of other ways. She is identified by some tax code as a homemaker, but she is all that a mom should be; or at least all that I expected for the mother of my children. She pulls together meals when I testify that there is nothing in the kitchen, the pantry, nor the freezer-fridge combination. Dishes arise in her mind the way characters are conjured from my creative spirit. She brings two or three generations of gram-to-mom-to-daughter lessons to our kitchen and passes history and heritage along to our kids. She is more like Mickey Mouse in Fantasia than she is Becky Home-echy, but she can cook. The woman can just plain cook. My wife’s name is Michelle. She’d love to meet you and would probably invite you to a dinner party.

We work together on most weekends to break-fast as I teach my kids the origin of the word “breakfast.” It is a secular lesson, not a scriptural one. I try to bring little things that I know to the meals that Michelle provides. But mostly breakfast at our house is a task for family time. We laugh together in chimes and sublime giggles. We look forward each summer to the deep, profound heat of August when we repeat a silly breakfast tradition that started years ago as a dad-in-the-moment prank. As breakfast ends, I slowly kick off my flip-flops or sneakers, pretend to be thinking aloud as I remove my glasses, and make a bee-line for the pool.

I dive head-long into the undersized inflatable pool, and the cool sip of summer refreshment drenches me better than my syrup-drizzled pancakes. Breakfast dishes can wait as Bethany, Brian, Becca and Michelle join me. We cool off, frolic, swim, splash, and laugh and laugh and laugh. We aren’t ignoring clean-up; we’re making memories.

We are the Kirks. It’s nice to meet you. Welcome to breakfast.