Tuesday, December 30, 2014

Flipping the Pancakes


I made potato pancakes for lunch.
They are basically two ingredients: mashed potatoes and eggs.
Garlic, salt and pepper to taste.
I've struggled with making them right.
My dad always made them for me, and I loved them.
The first time I tried to do it on my own, as a married woman,
I added milk.
Wondered why they were wrong.

I did okay today.
They're funny things, though.
When you first mix them up, they're so sloppy.
I slap a spoonful onto the frying pan in butter, and then wait and watch.
I always try to flip it before it's ready.
It falls apart.
Half flips, half doesn't.
I use the pancake turner to pat the entire thing back into a circle
and wait longer.

More heat, more pressure, and it becomes one.
I slide the turner underneath, and it holds together.
Moves as one.
Less breaks off to do its own thing.

As I cooked them today, I thought about marriage.
These two ingredients forming one thing.
The heat and the pressure and the time
changing us from an incoherent mass that falls apart
when we try to work together
into something that moves as one,
each part a complement to the other.

Perhaps it occurred to me because of a line from our wedding vows:
we promised to adhere to one another.
Our pastor thought that a funny phrase,
and made a joke about our first kiss.
But I think it's a beautiful turn of words.

And I hope my soul is melding just as surely to the Lord's.
Growing more and more able to move when He moves.
To hold fast and remain.
To be mixed together with Him in such a way
that I am His, and He is mine, and we are one.

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