This I Believe

Transcript for Your Reading Pleasure:

           

My eleven year old brother Peter and I bake. Not well, but we do. We set our ambitions high, tying on our mother’s spare aprons and rummaging through the fridge for rolls of nestle toll house cookies, frozen pie shells, and cans of pumpkin purée. We fumble through the recipe on the back on the Betty Crocker Box- that is, if I don’t accidentally toss it out before we begin. We guesstimate baking times, and eye ball cups of flour. My middle school Family Consumer Science teacher would weep at our baking blasphemy.

 But our only rule is simple: the more sugar, the better.

My brother wriggles excitedly, begging to crack the eggs.  Shells ends up in the batter, white rhombuses stirred in with mismeasured lumps of flour and splatters of vanilla extract. Inevitably, two or three of them will end up on the titled floor- he has a questionable success rate. Once we doubled the lime in a key lime pie, and added three eggs too many, then left it in the oven for a good twenty minutes extra. This is our normal baking method- in the oven, out of the oven, prod gingerly, and back in the oven. Wait five minutes, then repeat. We pass the time by pressing our noses to the oven door, and licking clean the any batter coated bowls and spoons. If my mom is lucky I might wash them. If I am lucky, my brother might wash them.

                It’s not of affinity for baking that draws us together. Not even our affinity for each other. Peter and I are seven years apart. We share so little in common. His world is that of Halo and Grand Theft Auto, governed by calls of duty to his Xbox 360. My small galaxy of studies and stress is a good three hours from his own. And that’s only the physical distances. When I am back from school, we are normal siblings. We argue. We make plans that don’t happen. Like the times I told him I would take him to breakfast before school. Real early, just you and me bud. Can we go to a real breakfast restaurant? You name it!

I slept in.

 He cried.

 I go long stretches without calling him from college. He spends large stretches in front of the TV screen. But I don’t want that to be the only place he can go. So for lack of better ideas, I beckon him into the kitchen. A realm that belongs to neither of us, but entices of both of us. I tempt him with recipes I’ve Googled, and delicious words like boysenberry coquen. Peter and I have yet to see, let alone taste, a boysenberry. But if it comes in a box at the grocery store, or in a syrup filled can- we’ll find it.

                We might never actually eat all of whatever concoction we bake. But that’s alright. I believe it’s okay to make desserts from the box. But not buying them shrink wrapped and ready to go, never buying them. Because it’s the mixing, the baking, the flour dusted, dropped spoons, spilling milk process that means for at least for those forty minutes, my brother is all mine. It’s just us, the batter, and one ridiculously messy kitchen.  And, of all the recipes we’ve ever attempted, I can promise, nothing is sweeter.