Be Delighted: A Moment of Sheer Yumminess!

This is my Reverb10 response the following questions:

From Tracey Clarke: Sift through all the photos of you from the past year. Choose one that best captures you; either who you are, or who you strive to be. Find the shot of you that is worth a thousand words. (Okay, technically this isn’t a shot of me, but it represents some very important work I do in the world!).

and . . . 

From Elise Marie Collins: What did you eat this year that you will never forget? What went into your mouth & touched your soul?

The Meal. The Moment. The Memory.

If you only looked at the raw ingredients, it didn’t really amount to much.  Pancake mix. Water. Food coloring. 

But then there were other ingredients as well: creativity, ingenuity, resourcefulness, cooperation, generosity, lovingkindness.

If there was a meal and a moment of sheer deliciousness and delight that I experienced in 2010, it is this one:

James and I were sleeping in on a Saturday morning.  We heard our kids (ages 14, 12, 10, and 10) moving around downstairs in the kitchen. It was not their conspiratorial whispers, but their laughter that finally woke us up.

When we came downstairs we found this was what they were (literally) cooking up:

Our son presenting us with a masterpiece of love, cooperation, and creativity!

Our son presenting us with a masterpiece of love, cooperation, and creativity!

Hamburger pancakes! Complete with pancake patties, tomatoes, lettuce, cheese, and buns! 

Throughout our fourteen-year career as parents, James and I have aspired to teach our children what we have felt are very important values: to love one another, to listen with an open heart, to seek common ground, to be resourceful, to live spontaneously, to be in the moment, to be guided by vision, to put your learning and skills to work, and to think of the happiness of others.  And this meal — though it actually tasted just like pancakes from a mix — also had the flavor of every important life-lesson we’d ever taught them.

Oh! How I savored that meal.

And how I will always savor the memory!