AText A
Mom and I decided it was time to get a serious cleaning done in the kitchen. We scrubbed the kitchen floors on our hands and knees and then followed up with a hand-applied wax. Then we tackled the oven—an old-fashioned gas oven, which needed to be sprayed and scraped and scrubbed. We then decided that, as a reward for all of our efforts, we would bake some cookies. So we measured, sifted, and stirred, then put our rounded tablespoon measures of perfect cookie dough onto our greased cookie sheets, and went to put them into our pristinely scrubbed and preheated oven. I slipped. The sheet upended, landing dough side down all over the hot interior of the opened oven door. My mother panicked and filled a bucket of hot, soapy water and put it on the floor. We began scooping hot, melty cookie dough out of the oven and into the bucket of soapy water. Just as we were cleaning the last of the mess out of the oven, my knee hit the bucket. Two gallons of sludge, cookie-dough, and melted chocolate-infused water spilled all over our newly waxed floor, leaving a pool of mush and mayhem all over the kitchen. We sat in the mess and laughed until we cried. Even though it was, by all counts, a complete kitchen disaster, it remains one of my mother’s and my favorite memories of being together in the kitchen.