Measure, Mix & More - SoGS #10

There’s an amazing feeling of relief that comes when you know you’ve made the right decision – and anyone who’s ever made a right decision knows exactly what I mean. The anxiety swarming in your stomach stills, the burden of concern lifts from your back, and a cloud of worry clears from your mind. You can see clearly, think clearly, and feel your hands again.

So the instant I hang up with Morning’s Glory on Wednesday, I know I’ve made the right decision. And judging from just how free I feel, this might be the best decision I’ve ever made.

Right after texting Ryleigh an excited I did it!! message, I pull on my Converse sneakers and take a morning walk to Delamore Funerals. The air has a slight dampness, and a cool breeze blows some of my hair into my face. I brush away the waves, tipped with pink, smiling at the memory of that haircut. At the time, I’d been so anxious about whether or not I should take the job at Delamore Funerals. Turns out, the very job I thought would ruin my summer made it a hundred times more meaningful.

Susan’s surprised smile greets me as I enter the little building. “Ella! You’re not scheduled to work today.”

“I know, but I wanted to talk to you about the upcoming school year.”

She nods, gesturing to a chair. “Please sit down. I’ve loved having you here, but I understand if that won’t work with your school schedule.”

“Actually, I’d love to stay on working part-time.” Her face lights up at this, and my own smile grows. “I just wanted to ask if I could work one or two days a week.”

Susan clasps her hands together, taking in a little gasp of – I think – delight. “Yes, that would be perfect! Honestly, I didn’t think you enjoyed working here so much.”

“I do. I’ve really loved being able to help so many people.”

Her smile deepens. “You remind me a lot of myself. Growing up, my parents owned a wedding venue. Kind of ironic that I’d end up opening a funeral home with my husband, but once I met Mark in college and saw how his compassion for people impacted his life, I knew I wanted to help people on such a deep level too.” She pauses, and I nod my acknowledgement. “Working here, you have power, Ella. We have the opportunity to guide grieving people through their pain with a sense of peace and even spread joy in the hardest moments of their lives.” Her brown eyes sparkle as she takes in a breath. “I think you really understand that now.”

“I do. Or, at least I’m starting to. Thank you so much for this opportunity.”

She pats my shoulder as I stand. “We’re glad to have you. Let me know what days you’ll be available for the school year. I’m so glad you’ve decided to stay.”

--

“Ella!” My mom greets me with a smile as soon as I walk in the door. “Ryleigh will be here in fifteen minutes.”

“Ryleigh’s coming?” I go over the past couple days in my head, but I can’t remember making any plans for Ryleigh to come to my house.

“Yeah, I thought you knew.” She tilts her head. “For your next bucket list hangout?”

Bucket list hangout? Definitely a mom thing to call it. I drop my canvas bag on the couch, pulling off my right shoe. “Ryleigh doesn’t like to tell me what we’re doing for her bucket list. But… did she tell you?”

Mom meets my hopeful gaze with narrowed eyes. “Not exactly. She mentioned that you needed to use the kitchen –”

I gasp, horrifying memories of two summers ago flashing through my mind as I race to the kitchen, my left shoe still intact on my foot.

“– and told me it wouldn’t end up like the microwave experiment!”

My feet stall under me when I hear Mom’s announcement. I’m not sure why I went to the kitchen, anyway, since Ryleigh still won’t be here for a few minutes. But if she’s planning something for us to do in my Mom’s happy place – her clean, gorgeous, YouTube-worthy kitchen...

Well, let’s just say when it comes to the kitchen I do not follow in my mother’s footsteps. Neither does Ryleigh.

With memories of the microwave mess-up still fresh in my mind, I am (naturally) not amused to see Ryleigh enter my house with an armful of ingredients bundled in her arms and a smile on her face.

“Ella!” She brushes past me, walking to the back of the kitchen. “I hope you had a great day at work. And I hope your mom didn’t give anything away, but I knew you’d be free this afternoon and it’s the perfect day for the last thing on my bucket list!” Ryleigh dumps the various groceries on the kitchen island, her smile morphing to an expression of sadness as she turns to face me. “Can you believe this is our tenth thing? The last one of the summer? We only have, like, a week until we start junior year!” She pauses, looking at me quizzically. “Are you okay?”

I imagine she asked me that because of the dumbfounded look on my face. I blink, clearing my head. “Ryleigh! We’re cooking?”

She winces at the slight shriek in my voice, but rolls her eyes as she sets up the ingredients in a neat line. “No, we’re not cooking. And I promised your mom we wouldn’t use the microwave.”

I breathe a sigh of relief. “Good.”

“Oh, it wasn’t that bad. And now we know that the quickest way to make mashed potatoes is not to put whole potatoes in the microwave without poking them with a fork first. But that’s nothing like what we’re doing today.”

I eye the ingredients – all-purpose flour, baking powder, butter. “Oh, yes, because everyone uses powdered sugar and vanilla extract to make papier mache.”

Ryleigh rolls her eyes. “We’re not cooking, we’re baking! Although I’ll have to put papier mache on the list for next year.”

“Isn’t baking the same thing? As cooking, I mean.” I scrunch up my nose. “My mom once asked for help making spaghetti, but I couldn’t figure out how to keep the long noodles from sticking out of the pot.”

“Ella,” Ryleigh huffs, pulling back her hair. “This is going to be fine. It’s cupcakes! Anyone can make those. My little brother James has made those before.” At my doubtful look, she shrugs. “So they were way too salty, but he still made them.”

“Fine. Cupcakes it is.”

Ryleigh nods with satisfaction, handing me a hair tie and grabbing a laminated piece of paper with the recipe on it. Her voice turns authoritative as she points to me. “You can start making the cupcakes, and I’ll do the frosting.”

“O-okay,” I agree slowly. “If you’re sure we can be trusted.”

She scoffs playfully. “Have I ever done anything because we can be trusted? This will be fine. It’ll give us some life experience!”

“Yeah, like spelunking gave us some ‘life experience.’” I give Ryleigh a sharp look.

“Spelunking was fun,” she argues.

“I tripped at the cave entrance and got a concussion!”

“But you survived.” She shoves the recipe at me, pointing at the first step. “This is how you’ll make the cupcakes. Just do what it says, and double-check all your measurements. Don’t read into the directions the way you read into your math tests. They’re not that hard.” She grabs a stick of butter, giving me an attempt at an encouraging smile. “And I promise, you will not get a concussion.”

I raise an eyebrow, sifting through a few ideas of how baking cupcakes could, in fact, result in a concussion, but decide not to argue. Anyway, we’ve done crazier things than baking. It can’t be that bad.

It doesn’t take long for me to realize Ryleigh’s definition of “baking as an experience.” With Ryleigh constantly peeking over me from the stand mixer, it takes half an hour to measure out and combine the dry ingredients.

“Your sugar measurement shouldn’t be heaping,” she says.

I run a butterknife over the measuring cup again in response.

“Does the recipe specify baking powder?” she asks. “There’s a big difference between that and baking soda.”

“Yes. I’m supposed to use both.”

“You’re using the cake flour, right? Not all-purpose?”

“Ryleigh. You only brought cake flour.”

Once my bowl of the dry mixture is finally set to the side, I squint at the recipe page. “It says I need egg whites.” I eye the eggs Ryleigh brought. Whole eggs, yolk and all.

Ryleigh moves to stand beside me, the stand mixer running in the background. “Oh, I’ve seen people separating eggs on cooking shows. Do you have a pin?”

I open a drawer to the right, producing a thumbtack. “Will this work?”

“Yep.” Ryleigh takes the thumbtack, placing it at the narrower end of the egg. “If I poke a hole in the egg, I should be able to drain out the whites…” She gently taps the egg, tapping harder and harder as my brow furrows in confusion, until finally the whole egg shatters with a splat. Raw egg drips from Ryleigh’s hand onto the counter.

“Ryleigh!” I grab a paper towel and sop up the counter spill before it gets on the floor. When Ryleigh’s hands are clean, I take another egg. “I’ve seen my mom separate eggs, and she’s never poked a hole in it.” I crack the egg, placing it in my left hand which I hold over a bowl. Slimy egg white seeps down into the bowl, and I set the eggshell to the side. “I think she just passes it from one hand to the other…” Gently, I move my right hand over the bowl and place the egg in it, letting a little more white drip into the bowl.

“Huh,” Ryleigh mutters. “That’s actually working.”

No sooner does she say it than the yolk starts to mush into the white a little. I try to press it back into a little ball with my free hand, but it just breaks more. A few drips of yolk find their way into the bowl, and before long it’s completely mixed with the egg white, and my hand is a mess.

Ryleigh groans, handing me a paper towel and grabbing the bowl from the counter. “Are you sure that’s how your mom does it?”

“Well… I thought so.” I run my hands under hot water, slathering them with soap. “Maybe she uses forks instead? Or she might have some fancy tool she uses.”

“So in other words, you have no idea.”

Three forks, a potato masher, the cheese grater, and five eggs later, we finally resort to asking for help. My mom strides in the kitchen like the confident recipe vlogger she is, demonstrating how to “separate eggs with grace and poise” – and I have to admit, I’ve never seen anyone separate eggs as gracefully and poised as she does.

You’d think that two teenage girls who’ve done pretty much everything under the sun would have made cupcakes before. Ryleigh’s aunt has a cousin whose son was once on MasterChef Jr., so you’d think cooking would be in her blood. And yes, Ryleigh makes sugar cookies every Christmas for her family reunions, but she usually doesn’t enjoy baking – probably because her little brother wants in on every project she tries, and you can imagine how badly that would go if Ryleigh ever wanted to make tiramisu.

I’ve never really had a need to bake, since my mom’s always cooking and baking for her recipe testing. She insists she has to do it all herself to make sure the proportions are right, and I especially can’t be in the kitchen when she’s filming a video.

So baking’s never really been a huge part of Ryleigh’s life or mine… but as I bite into one of our generously frosted, still-warm vanilla cupcakes, I wonder if that should change. Sure, the frosting is slightly overmixed and melting slightly, and the cupcake is more of a mushroom shape from overfilling the pans. But with its perfectly moist inside, topped with mounds of not-too-sweet and oh-so-fluffy frosting… who cares what shape it is?

“This is the best cupcake I’ve ever had!” Ryleigh exclaims, her mouth full. I nod, giving a little whimper of agreement. We call in my mom to taste one, and even she agrees that they turned out wonderfully.

She eyes our rack of uniquely sized cupcakes, finishing the one in her hand. “Try filling each cup two-thirds of the way next time. It’ll help the sizes to be more consistent.”

At my resigned “thanks, mom,” she grabs another with a laugh before retreating back to the living room.

“One more cupcake, and then we’ll clean.” Ryleigh dusts her hands off, surveying the kitchen as I follow her gaze. A pile of eggshells clutters the sink. The counter glistens with streaks of butter. Drips of cupcake batter dries on the floor. Remnants of the egg separating experiment is still stuck to the cabinets, and a thin layer of flour covers everything. Somehow, a little bit of frosting even ended up on the ceiling.

Not exactly Pinterest-perfect.

I groan. “This is why I never bake. I don’t know how my mom does it.”

Ryleigh holds up her cupcake, raising a brow. “But you have to agree it’s worth it.”

I take another cupcake with a nod. Oh, yes. Despite the dripping frosting, inconsistent sizes, and messy kitchen, spending an afternoon talking about life and conjuring up something delicious – and new – made a spectacular end to our summer bucket list.

--

After spending a long time looking at other cars in the area and even more time thinking about what my dad said about the Mustang, I finally announce my decision to him and my mom over my mom’s new fondue recipe. And on Saturday, we show up at Karl’s Cars. I feel confident and ready to make my first big purchase.

I say hi to Karl and ask if Will’s here today.

“Not today,” Karl’s southern drawl coordinates with a worn baseball cap and overalls. “You here to buy that Subaru you’ve been ogling over?”

I shake my head. “Not that one.” Casting one last glance at the beautiful Subaru that would take more money than I have to fix up, I turn towards the yellow Mustang. “I’m getting the Mustang.”

Karl nods, leading us to the car. I reach it first, freezing when I catch sight of something on the hood.

A giant sunflower, almost the same color as the car, tied with a pink ribbon. Gently I pick it up, unable to help the big smile that spreads all over my face.

“Any idea who that’s from?” My dad’s voice comes from behind me.

I can’t stop smiling as I stare at the bloom in my hands. “Maybe. Maybe not.”

A car the color of flowers that reflect the sun. Perfect for the summer that turned out better than I could have imagined.

--

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