I have a bowl, a small bowl. An old bowl, circa late 1950s-early 1960s: a Pyrex bowl with a Gooseberry Pattern in Cinderella pink and white, the 1.5pt size one. However, none of the descriptions about this bowl on the eBay and vintage sites, name its greatest feature..it was my Dad's pancake bowl.
I woke up to a snowing Buffalo morning and started thinking about my Saturday. I thought if I have to shovel, maybe I should start with hot breakfast. So I put the kettle on, made my hubby a cup of coffee in his medieval looking syphon coffee contraption and reached for "the bowl." Every time I make pancakes at home, they are made in this bowl, my Dad's bowl. I don't use it for anything else, although my Mom did use it as a serving bowl for dinner, I reserve it for it's most important purpose...pancakes.
I grew up in a very traditional household. Dad worked outside our home, and Mom worked at home, which meant that in the traditional roles of the time, my Mom did all the meals for the family. My Dad would occasionally make a "Pot O' Beans" (southern style that started with soaking beans overnight and cooking them forever with some bacon) and southern style cornbread (not the sweet kind, mind you) that he would eat for lunch. But for the most part, he stayed out of the kitchen, except for Saturdays. Saturday mornings he would wake me up with a "who wants some flapjacks?" I'd scramble out of bed and run to the kitchen, still in my pajamas, and up onto the kitchen chair he'd already pulled up to the counter so I could reach. You see, pancakes were a Daddy and Me thing. We used a mix, but the kind you had to add more than just water to. We'd scoop out the mix into this bowl. He taught me how to crack an egg and measure the milk. He showed me how to mix it, "just until the lumps are gone" and how to know "when it was just right" by lifting the spoon out of the bowl and watching how it dripped back into the bowl. He taught me the value of waiting for the batter to rest, so the pancakes were fluffy. He'd heat the griddle, wipe on a small amount of oil and let it heat. He'd place a hand an inch above the surface and say "it's ready when you can't hold your hand there for more than a second or two." (Now I didn't get the practice that part, that was not part of the hands-on training, Lol)
When it was ready, He'd move the chair over so I could watch as he poured perfect circles onto the griddle. He'd been a cook in the army in two wars, he would off-handedly reference cooking for the soldiers in the mess tents, or sometimes he'd reminisce about his time in the CC camps and sometimes about being a kid in Alabama. We would watch the little cakes and he'd ask me "are the ready yet" and I'd carefully watch for the bubbles to form on the tops and for them to look not too "wet" and then I say "Now, now!" He'd flip them over with the ease of a short-order diner cook and tap the tops looking for them to bounce back up. Then he'd say, playfully "now go on and git" and I'd jump down, sliding the chair back to the table. Mom would have the table set along with juice for me and coffee for them, butter, 2 kinds of syrup, maple for us and golden syrup for my Dad, (look it up it's a Southern thing.) My Dad would finish off another couple sets of pancakes and put the platter on the table and say "well then, eat up."
When I was little, making pancakes with my Dad was a fun Saturday activity. What I didn't realize until much later, was just what those mornings really meant. My Dad would wait hours after getting up, until he could wake me to make pancakes. This man got up every morning at dawn, whether it was to go to work or just start his day. He didn't sleep in, even on the weekends. At that time, my Dad was working as a press operator at the Ford Stamping plant. They would often run double and sometimes triple shifts. He never complained, never seemed tired, always had time for me, even though I'm sure there were days when things would have been faster to do, without a shadow. But my Daddy was as patient as the come; patient when I'd spill the milk or get a shell in batter or mix too hard. When I'd ask endless questions or snap the back of the newspaper for the fifth time while he was reading, or ask silly questions about the animals on the Mutual of Omaha Wild Kingdom show.
Making pancakes wasn't just a fun childhood memory of making breakfast.
It was the example my Father set, of how to place a priority on those things in our life that matter most. How to make time, with a happy heart. My Dad knew that those moments were here for a only a short time. I'm beyond grateful...for the his time, his wisdom, his patience...for his pancake bowl.