by Benjamin Harris Shaw
My 61-year-old mother loves to cook. She loves to bake. Whenever I return home, I head straight for the kitchen, where I know I'll find a sour cream coffee cake waiting for me.
Last fall my mom decided her 17-year old oven was no longer cutting it. She had her heart set on a top of the line, GE Profile. A duel-fuel, slide-in range with self-cleaning, convection baking, proofing and automatic shutdown mode.
The new oven was scheduled to arrive the Tuesday before Thanksgiving… an important holiday in the Shaw household.
Thanksgiving is one of the few times we gather at home as a family. My brother Jon lives in Boston, I live in New York and my parents spent most of each year living on their boat half way across the world.
But just days before the oven was delivered, my mom bent over to tie her shoe and couldn't straighten back up. She'd ruptured two discs in her lower back. My dad called the ambulance and got her to the hospital. Surgery was scheduled for the day after thanksgiving.
When my brother, Jon, and I arrived home a couple days later, there was no coffee cake in the kitchen. In fact, there wasn't even any cranberry sauce in the pantry… and it was two days before Thanksgiving.
This was the first time my brother and I had been confronted with caring for our aging parents. We decided to keep the routine as normal as possible and prepare the traditional holiday meal. If we couldn't have mom in the kitchen at least we could conjure up the familiar smells and tastes that brought her to mind.
No one in my family had every undergone major surgery before. And mulling over the possible consequences of spinal surgery was no fun… I distracted myself by figuring out how to work the new oven.
Neither my brother nor I excel in the culinary arts… My cooking skills extend to spaghetti and bean burritos. Jon's aren't much more advanced. And dad… he can throw together a sandwich when he has to.
Thanksgiving morning, we divided up the labor. Jon was charge of the turkey and salad. I handled the stuffing and yams. We tackled the all-important apple pie together.
We covered the counters with flour, cookbooks and utensils. Once or twice we called mom to ask where she kept this or that ingredient.
She was happy to talk, but was so loaded with pain medication, that she'd begin to explain where we could find the nutmeg, then drift off to a happier place. My brother and I took turns bringing her back to reality.
Fancy new oven, beginners luck… who knows… But the pie rose to a great height, the turkey was cooked to perfection and the yams were nearly as good as moms.
Still, it was far from a traditional thanksgiving. We sat in my mother's hospital room, gathered around her bed, helping her eat apple pie out of a Tupperware container.
The next day during surgery my brother and I sat waiting with my father. We'd never seen him so distraught and distracted. We calmed him with hugs and hand holding… only doing what he had done for us countless times before.
My brother and I certainly never expected to be taking care of our parents now. And we were glad the role reversal wasn't permanent. Jon and I went back to being students… mom and dad went back to being mom and dad.
But we all knew it was a preview of times to come… hopefully later rather than sooner.
Two days after surgery my mom was released from the hospital, feeling fragile and old but a whole lot better. She walked through the front door and made a bee-line for the kitchen, anxious to see her new stove.
A couple weeks ago we were all together again for Passover and mom finally got to put her oven to the test… preparing dinner for12 - two nights in a row. She couldn't have been happier.
And I was happy too… comfortable in my role as dishwasher.