So Much Depends on a Batch of Pancakes

On the passing of time and this moment being every moment

It’s a Saturday morning, one of these slow November days, when the bright almost-winter sunshine glares off the frosty carpet of leaves and the sky is an icy blue and the clouds are all huge and harmless. Cold air pushes through the edges of the door. Thanksgiving is nearly here.

I meander into the kitchen and our two Littles are asking for a late breakfast so I suggest pancakes and they enthusiastically accept. I’m fishing out the griddle and the ingredients and the cookbook with our favorite pancake recipe. The morning sun makes lines of the blinds on the floor and Winnie the Labrador, who might be pregnant, is snuggled up on the leather sofa.

She has seemed sad since Cade and Lucy left in the fall, the two of them off to college. Lucy was one of her favorite in the pack, and her absence has Winnie pining for the past. Winnie adjusts on the couch, her head now resting on the back so that she can see out the window and up the lane. Whenever she does this, I wonder if she’s waiting for them.

I want to tell her that she’s longing for a past that’s not coming back—Cade and Lu, our first two, are off now on their own adventures, and yes, they’ll come back in the summers and on break but it’s not going to be the same, not quite. Get it together, Winnie. Life moves on. I feel I should tell Winnie this, but I don't have the heart.

I get out the pancake recipe and Leo’s in the living room watching Premier League soccer and Poppy’s sitting quietly beside her doll house and how is it 2023, when our two Littles are now 7 and 9, and our oldest, who used to be the ones watching TV and playing with dolls on quiet Saturday mornings are now 20 and 18?

It seems pointless, measuring the years, keeping track of ages and months, when the hard times go so slow, and the delightful times pass so quickly. What are we supposed to do with these days, so full, so empty, littered with loss and beauty and hope?

The world’s just spinning
A little too fast
If things don’t slow down soon, we might not last
So just for the moment, let’s be still¹

I go downstairs to fetch some flour—we seem to be out, and Maile’s parents have just finished a few months living in our basement apartment. Fortunately there is flour leftover from their time with us, and then I’m back upstairs, in the kitchen, opening the cookbook.

I take the measuring cup and scoop out some flour, and I dump one and a half cups of flour into the mixing bowl, and then I stop, because that’s the recipe for one batch, but I normally make two batches, a mountain of pancakes, a pile that will feed eight. I can’t remember the last time I made a single serving of pancakes.

But it’s just me and Mai and the two Littles this morning—Cade and Lu are off at college and Sam is on a youth retreat and Abra is at work. The house feels empty, for a moment, and I think of the family we created and raised, the family that is now moving out into the world, quicker than I could have imagined, beyond my grasp. It’s an incredibly sad and wonderful thing, watching your kids make their own way into the world.

I stop at one and a half cups of flour, and I stare it for a moment. It seems such a small amount. And then I make the rest of the recipe for one batch of pancakes: one cup of almond milk instead of two, 3 1/2 teaspoons of baking powder instead of 7, and so on and so forth. And I pour the batter on the griddle a bit at a time, where it hisses and pops and I flip each of the pancakes until the plate is full and the kitchen is warm and everything smells delicious and new.

“Pancakes ready!” I call out, my voice sounding through the house, and then there is the pitter-patter of little feet and stools scraping against the island and for a moment it is 15 years ago and we are in Virginia and Cade and Lucy are eagerly digging into breakfast. They were always the best of friends. They still are. I love to hear them talking.

But it’s not 2008. It’s 2023, and Leo and Poppy are laughing about something and Leo is making a smiley face on his pancakes with the strawberries I cut up and the banana forms the smiley face’s mouth. Poppy is pouring syrup and the sun is glaring off the kitchen sink, and outside I can see the last red leaves on the Japanese Maple tree spinning in the wind. And this moment is every moment, every quiet Saturday, and the leaves are every autumn, and there is nothing else.

Cade and Lucy home for fall break, the band back together

1. The Head and the Heart, “Let’s Be Still”