Cooking Conversations

“Mommy, will you sit with me in the kitchen while I make the scones?”

It’s after ten p.m. on a Friday night.

She is eleven, but only for about three more months.

Scout’s Scones has an order and we have a crowded schedule tomorrow so it’s baking time tonight for this young entrepreneur.

I gather my supplies – blue ink pen, blank notebook, listening ears, sympathetic face.

“Yes.  I’ll sit in the kitchen with you.”

And she mixes.

Flour.  Milk.  Chocolate chips.

She kneads.

She talks.

About cartoons.  Tattoos.

She hums.

Tells me she cut her finger making her last batch of scones.

I hadn’t known.

She grins.

Long hair pulled back,

Favorite non-descript green t-shirt on.

“I didn’t tell you,” she confesses.

She’s extra animated tonight.

The late hour.

The alone-with-mom time.

“I didn’t want to make a big deal of it.  I don’t care for making a big deal of things that aren’t big deals.  Unlike all of my sisters.”

We share a goofy grin.

We speak the same language,

this daughter of my thirtieth birthday and I.

“I like to make people laugh.  I think people like that.”

Goodness – I could listen for hours to these over-scones confidences.

She laughs.  She makes funny faces.  Tells me jokes she has made that friends thought were especially funny.

“I like you,” I tell her.

Her smile is simply beautiful.

Her spirit as happy as she is pretty.

Sincerity oozes from the golden headed sixth grader.

“I like you too Mommy.  So much.  So very much.”