Mistakes

Does my mother make mistakes?

She's grinning right now. She's probably laughing out loud reading this.

"Of course I do," she'd guffaw. "I make mistakes all the time!"

So this morning I'm in the kitchen making breakfast for Ann and our friend, Laurie. French Toast with caramelized pears. I've never made caramelized pears before, but once I had them served on my French Toast at a fancy restaurant (I even think I was having breakfast with my mother...but no matter...) and they were delicious.

There I am carving out the guts of the nice ripe red pears, dipping the juicy halves into brown sugar, placing them gently into a cast-iron skillet and worrying that they will burn or turn mushy or taste awful.

Ann comes in. "Smells great! What are you doing?"

Me: Caramelizing pears.

Ann: Do you know how to do that?

God no! I'm thinking. Shit! What if I've made a big mistake?

And then I think of my mother who, in my eyes, rarely (if ever) makes mistakes and most certainly never does so in the kitchen.

She had to have made some mistakes, I tell myself. She's not perfect. Weren't their meals I couldn't stand? I search through my memories and while there were meals that I didn't like, everyone else ate them with enough platitudes of gratitude that the food must not have been awful.

No, I concluded, my mother does not make cooking mistakes.

My mother is not perfect either, but she does not make mistakes when it comes to food and the preparation thereof.

Okay, I buoyed myself, I am half of her...I mean, her genes are in me and while I've avoided admitting it, I like to cook. I may not like it as much as my mother, I may not be half as adventurous, but I like spending time in the kitchen preparing things. Hell, even she started out with basic stuff like brownies and grilled pork chops before she took on great feats of culinary wizardry like caramelized pears.

I poured the 1/2 cup of water on the browned pears and waited. Lid or no lid? Are they softening or mushening? Will they still be brown? Is the sauce at the bottom of the pan evaporating, thickening or getting even more watery with the juice of the pears? Is the flame up high enough or is it too high?

These must be all the questions my mother asks herself, I'm thinking. She probably even compares herself to her own mother who cooked for truckloads of people when she was alive and whipped up things like ice cream cakes on a moment's notice. Maybe my mother feels insignificant when she compares herself to her own mother just like I'm feeling now...right?

20 minutes later the pears are done. The sauce is thick and spreads evenly over the pears sitting beautifully on a white platter. The French Toast tasted great, the pears the perfect compliment to the measured vanilla and the sprinkled cinnamon.

Whew! No mistakes...

...this time.