Zibby Mag

By Carrie McKean

I level the flour the same way she taught me. Flat edge of a butter knife, tap-tap-tap across the top of the measuring cup to create a whole range of miniature peaks and valleys. Back again with a final swoosh to send a silent waterfall of excess flour plummeting over the edge of the dented metal cup.

I wish everything in life could be this neatly measured, adjusted, resolved.

“What recipe are you using, sweetie?” Grandma asks me from her seat at the counter. “Your Papa sure will love having some homemade cookies. I haven’t felt good enough to cook them the last couple of weeks.”

“Your recipe, Grandma,” I say. “Just like you taught me.”

As I pull out the Tupperware container and reach in for the old aluminum scoop, I recall all the times growing up when I was allowed to scoop the sugar. She never turned down a kid asking for a taste, understanding the importance of childhood necessities like tasting the sugar, helping a grownup, and feeling welcomed, needed, and loved.

I’ve watched my own children open their sticky palms to her, watched her delightedly pour little rivulets of just-to-taste sweetness into their hands with the same old sugar scoop. The girls are growing up and Grandma is shrinking away. I find myself envying the static nature of the scoop. Unchanging. Never aging.

Baking soda and salt. Bitter and salty. These are the two ingredients I wish were not required in chocolate-chip cookies, or in life. When I got word of Grandma’s most recent stroke, a panic that I might never see her again sat in the back of my throat like a bitter pill I couldn’t swallow. I hunted for last-minute tickets from my home in Midland, Texas, to Portland, Oregon, salty tears running freely down my cheeks.

Throughout the summer, I dutifully stayed six feet away from everyone at the grocery store and two thousand miles from the only place I longed to go. It was the first summer in more than ten years that I hadn’t visited; the only summer my children didn’t frolic through the same back pasture where I ran barefoot as a girl — the place where I’ve always felt the safest, wild, and free.

I didn’t know how many more chances I’d have to see her. But I knew I had right now and I knew I needed to go. I needed to hold her hand in mine. I needed to ask her how to let go of someone I loved. I needed to tell her that even though I am thirty-nine, I’m not yet ready to be the grown-up. I needed to ask her if she thought I’d be alright. I needed her to show me the way forward.

Here I am, pressing the brown sugar into the measuring cup. As it forms to the edges, I ponder all the ways we’ve each contorted ourselves to fit the shape of this new pandemic-stricken world, and all the ways we’ve made seemingly impossible decisions.

Families across the world have wrestled with the same emotions and so many have had to whisper final goodbyes through little rectangular screens held up by weary nurses. To have the opportunity to stand in this kitchen one more time, with Grandma a few feet away, feels as luxurious as the real butter she’s always insisted on using in her cookies. I pause to see if she needs me to warm up the cup of coffee she’s been nursing all morning, but she’s dozing in her chair at the counter. I let her rest.

I add a generous dash of vanilla extract, and then add some more. It’s not the exotic I crave; it’s life’s beautifully mundane vanilla moments. I’ve had my share of adventures, but nothing compares to the serenity of moments like this. I try to soak it all in, studying her hands curling around the coffee cup, the particular clicking of her kitchen clock, the smell of vanilla filling the room. I ground myself to this moment and this space with all of my senses.

Rummaging through the cabinet, I find a box of instant vanilla pudding mix, the secret ingredient for our family’s recipe. She begins to stir, and appears slightly confused about my hunt for the mix. The stroke put her in the hospital for several days. Now, she has trouble remembering her trademark cookie recipe. (I’ll let you in on the secret: It’s the recipe on the bag of Tollhouse chocolate chips plus a package of vanilla pudding mix, any brand will do. Promise you’ll say you made “Grandma Washington’s Cookies” if you try it.)

I know she keeps the beaters in the drawer by the sink, even though the mixer itself is three cabinets away next to the stove. It’s not how I would have arranged things. Truth be told, I never would have used the old hand mixer for this job. It sputters as it tries to slog through the thick cookie dough. Like its owner, maybe it needs a nap to recharge.

When I reached to pull the stand mixer out from under its quilted cover, I hear her chuckle from her seat at the counter, now fully awake. The chuckle says it all: She’s questioning my capacity to determine which mixer is suitable, but subtlety has never been her strength. I don’t mind. She may be eighty-six, but it’s her kitchen and her rules. And I’ll always be her little girl.

Nine minutes later, the cookies come out of the oven and they’re perfect, just like hers have always been. A few days after that, I’m back home in Texas and the phone rings. It’s Grandma.

“Carrie, dear,” I hear her upbeat voice and know today is a day that she feels good; I am beaming.

“Remind me what you put in your cookies. They’re just so good. So much better than the last ones I made.”

I have to accept this moment for what it is: Bittersweet, like the chocolate chips I can hear her pouring in the bowl. She’s still here. So am I. It’s more than enough, just like the generous heaping of chocolate I know rests in that familiar metal mixing bowl.

She’s already taught me how to keep moving forward.

“Add a box of vanilla pudding mix, Grandma,” I say. “They’ll turn out perfect.”

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Carrie McKean is a writer living in Midland, Texas. Married to her high-school sweetheart and the mother of two little girls, Carrie writes to help her pay attention to the extraordinary ordinary moments of life. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times and Texas Monthly. You can find her online at carriemckean.com