Brown Sugar

It wasn’t a big thing. Just brown sugar. Brown sugar in a Tupperware container.

“Grab a piece of bread,” I’d said to Goldie after we’d finished making caramel corn the other night. “If we put it in with the brown sugar then it won’t . . .”

“I know, mom,” she cheerily interrupted (already on her way to the bread box).

She knew?

She knew about putting a piece of bread in with brown sugar to keep it from getting hard? I’d already taught her that?

Surely I couldn’t have. Why, my own mother only taught it to me not so very long ago.

Only, I was the child then: my mom teaching me in bits and pieces, here and there, how to go about navigating this world. Never say unkind things to others. Read good books. Take responsibility with your education. Learn and live the gospel. . . . Add a slice of bread to your brown sugar to save it from going hard.

(My mom)

Suddenly it hit me. I am the mom now. Me. Things have come full circle. I’ve been given my wings and am supposed to be teaching other little fledglings to fly. Upon this realization there was a moment of panic. What have I been teaching them? Have I been teaching them all the things my mom taught me? Then I looked at Goldie – sticking the bread in with the brown sugar and shutting the lid tight – and thought, “Well, she knows about the brown sugar. Maybe I’ve taught her a few other things as well. Maybe we’re doing all right.”

Also . . .

Sometimes we eat Anders. “Eat you,” he’ll say, holding out his arm. And we’ll gobble him up and call him a yummy cookie or a delicious cake, and he’ll laugh and laugh and demand we eat him again.

That is, of course, when he isn’t too busy doing a little reading at breakfast with his dad:

And, some of the other readers around here. (I love that Abe is reading National Geographic.)