The breach is terrible, and the smell of putrid failure permeates the air.
At least she didn’t mention the chocolate.
“Is that the chocolate burning, too?”
Carnage washes itself over my stove on Mother’s Day. What was meant to be a sweet crepe reward for my very hard-working wife has turned into a 1917 battlefield. Somewhere above, angels weep.
The gallon of crepe batter that I had made covered the stove-top as one gigantic two-foot sheet. It ran like a flash flood over all the burners and crested at the edge to leak into the oven. As I dealt with that, chocolate that I was slowly melting began to burn. Fumes that would be classified as chemical warfare filled the air as I frantically tried to gain control of the uncontrollable situation.
How did this happen? How did this go so wrong?
Because I have big gorilla hands that are about as delicate as thrown bricks.
I have a special batter dispenser that I usually use for pancakes. I have a griddle on the back porch, and this allows me to make 35 pancakes in about 5 minutes. Now that I have teenagers and very often their friends, this makes things very handy when they want a “snack.” Honestly, they are like hobbits and demand a second breakfast and then elevenths. The problem though seems to be that my batter dispenser is made of plastic rather than adamantium.
But surely the dispenser would work with crepe batter. It’s thinner than pancake batter so it should be no problem. I heated up the burners, put the chocolate over lukewarm water to melt, and heated up my skillet to make crepes.
And then I squeezed the dispenser trigger and all hell broke loose.
The handle shattered in my hand. A spring pinged off the microwave as batter came out like lava. In my jerking motions, I didn’t even hit the pan. The entire contents, about a half gallon, splooshed onto my hot stovetop.
Crepes cook really fast. It’s why I like making them. Crepes cook especially fast they are directly on two different burners.
The bottoms of the crepe become solid almost instantly which allows another batter layer to roll on the top and begin cooking. It looks like volcanic ash washing up on a shoreline. And the best I can do is scream my cry of defeat as I scrap off batter as fast as I can.
My daughter hands me paper towels as I continue to use a plastic spatula to keep the batter away. And as you have already guessed, the gooey smell of burnt plastic now mingles with the smell of the neglected chocolate.
I scrap, melt, and pat with paper towels. I burn my finger. I burn the crepes. I salvage the chocolate because I know what’s most important right now.
The dog licks my toes as the batter has covered my flip flops. It’s an early morning sweet foot treat and I hope that he is enjoying himself. My younger son starts screaming for what I can only assume is his thought that the situation didn’t have enough tension already built into it. He’s a natural storyteller.
My teenage son just laughs.
And the batter? It remains out of control.
The two on burners are black batter crusted as I continue to move as fast as I can. So much batter lost to hands that squeeze things to hard. So much opportunity lost to Neanderthal genetics.
I often think that my wife deserves better than me. She deserves the moon and the stars and the best I can offer is crusted blackened disks covered in out of season strawberries and mushy over ripe blueberries. I haven’t even gotten to the home-made whip cream, but I’m not hopeful.
Then my wife comes in. She sees what is happening. She sees my daughter frantically trying to help. She hears my sons in the symphony of noise and defeat. And she laughs her butt off.
I lack many things that my wife deserves. But the one thing that I can always bring her is the laughter of the world. Even when failure sets the smoke alarms off, I can get her to smile. And more than anything this Mother’s Day, that is her gift. Laughter and smiles at a try-hard to tries really hard.
But I’m also a guy who knows my own weaknesses. You don’t reach my age without failure. I said that I made about a gallon of crepe batter. That is way too much, UNLESS you expect something to go wrong. I know me. I know my children. I know that disaster follows us like Little Bo Peep’s Sheep.
And so, after we finally get things under control, and make new crepes, complete with unburned chocolate, strawberries, blue berries, and whip cream-we finally give my wife the Mother’s Day gift that cost us singed body parts instead of money.
It’s the gift that she loves most.
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