20 Million Tiny Particles

1. Biscuits

I was twelve when my mom taught me how to make biscuits. Tried, at least. Mom was always looking for teachable moments. I wondered a lot if that's why she had kids — to make her self-taught skills seem impressive to smaller versions of herself. Maybe she wanted validation that she had something to teach.

I was eager to learn. By this time, I had soared past pancakes and was ready to take on a more strenuous challenge.

I watched Mom prepare the space on a Sunday morning, putting stray dishes from the night before into the dishwasher in our small but workable kitchen. I leaned against the dull white fridge and tugged on chipping wallpaper as I waited. I had a bad habit of doing so, hoping that by picking at the fraying edges I could somehow make the flaws less visible. It never worked — in fact, it almost always made it worse.

Mom pulled open the pantry and swung her apron off the hook on the inside of the door. As I watched her tie it around her waist, I knew this was a special occasion. The apron, which was a gift from my father's mother several Christmases ago, had spent almost all of its life tucked away in the dark pantry, only taken out into the light when we had family over (almost never). It wasn't that Mom and her apron weren't wonderful hosts — they were, and demonstrated chefs as well. But when you live in a modified apartment atop an antique shop, it's hard to fit the extended Thanksgiving family into the dining room without more than an acceptable level of discomfort.

With her apron on, Mom adjusted the banana clip keeping back her hair, frizzy and spun out in corkscrew curls. She must've been in her late thirties then, but she had a youthful quality that made her always seem like she'd always just run off the bus from cheerleading practice. It's the kind of air that would make a tightly-wound daughter envious of her own mother.

She smiled at me as I stood still leaning against the fridge, watching from a distance. Walking to retrieve the flour tin, she instructed, "Go ahead and get the buttermilk."

I obeyed and pulled the half-gallon of Mayfield from the side door of the fridge. "Anything else from in here?" I asked.

"That's it." I turned and she was already shaking flour out onto the island countertop that took up most of the floorspace in our kitchen. I asked what she was doing as I set the bottle on the counter away from the flour's spread. I didn't ask because I hadn't seen her do it a million times before, because I had, nearly every Sunday morning since I could remember, but because this was the first time I was paying attention.

It's funny what you miss because you aren't asking about it.

"You've got to get the surface covered or the dough will stick to the counter." She slapped her hands together, covering her palms in white powder. "Hands too."

"Got it," I said, stepping closer. "What can I do?"

"Just watch," she said. With the flour dusted over the counter, she reached for the measuring cup to stick into the flour tin, taking it back out when it was filled to the brim with white stuff. This was the part of cooking that I liked best — measuring, leveling, pouring, and repeating. The science of it. Follow the recipe and all will go according to plan.

She dumped the cup into a large red sifter beside her on the counter. Then, picking it up, she began rotating the handle as sifted flour snowed down into the big metal bowl in front of her. "What does that do?" I asked.

"Keeps the bad flour out," she clarified, "and all the good flour in." Once the good flour was in the bowl, she repeated the process with another cup. Then came the Crisco, scooped out with a spoon and dropped into the bowl of flour only to stick haphazardly to the side.

"What is shortening, anyway?" I wondered.

Mom shrugged. "Just fat." She dropped another spoonful into the mix and looked up at me. "Now here comes the fun part." She motioned for me to come closer. With a fork, she began to swirl the shortening lumps into the flour. When she'd done all she could with the fork, she got her hands involved. "You want to make a well with the flour and shortening," she explained. "Push it all around the edges of the bowl, but don't do too much work yet."

"Okay," I said, watching carefully.

"Then," she continued, picking up the buttermilk with her flour-and-fat-covered hands, "you pour in the buttermilk." I watched her uncap it and begin to let it fall into the middle of the mix.

"Wait," I said, holding out a clean hand to stop her. She paused. "How much buttermilk?"

She looked at me like she'd never thought about it. "About a cup," she said. "Or two. As much as you need. You'll know."

This was the part of cooking I hated — dreaded. Mom told me once after I burnt a pot of spaghetti noodles that feeling was as important in cooking as any recipe. This was the part she loved, the intuition of it all. My sister, Ava, was the same — she would burn a plate of eggs but somehow always knew exactly what spices to add to a throw-it-all-in casserole. The two were similar in that way. Driven by their feelings. Led by their senses. Air signs.

But what Ava made up for in instinct she totally lacked in will to learn. That was where I came in. I wasn't a natural, but I was willing to watch and try and try again.

Mom was mixing the milk into the flour with her hands, folding dry over wet until it was a big blob of whitish goop. "Biscuit dough," she said, picking up the blob with both hands and dropping it like a brick onto the floured countertop.

"What else goes in it?" I asked, eager for the next step.

"Just good love and affection," Mom answered with a slight laugh. She looked proud of herself as she rolled the dough out with a cup. "Now, don't roll it too flat," she warned. "You want them fluffy and big, but not doughy."

"How do you know when they're the right size?"

"You'll know." She began carving out little circles of dough with the drinking end of the cup — a Lion King souvenir cup we got at a Burger King, I think, some years ago. She cut out four circles from the center of the slab of dough. When the circles were cut out, she transferred them to a greased baking pan and turned to me. "Want to try?"

I nodded and moved closer beside her. "Take what's left and roll it between your hands," she instructed. "Don't be too rough with it — gentle, there you go. Now drop it down and roll it out a little bit — ah, ah, okay, there it is." I attempted to pull the cup back from the mound of gook glued to the side of it, but the dough just clumped up on the cup.

"What did I do?"

"It's okay, peel it off and keep going."

I tried but quickly became frustrated as dough got stuck underneath my fingernails and somehow in my hair and on my clothes within seconds. Mom helped scrape the side of the cup off and was able to gather enough dough back together to repeat the process — cutting the dough, balling up the dough, rolling out the dough, and starting over until there were only scraps remaining.

She took a corner of unused dough and picked it up with her finger. "Here's your baby biscuit," she said, holding it out for me. I rolled my eyes but took it and popped it in my mouth. It was probably disgusting, but eating the sweet, buttermilk-tinged dough was a secret tradition my mother had indulged me with since I was a little kid. Maybe I'd get sick with salmonella, or whatever room temperature shortening and buttermilk can give you, but it was my favorite taste.

"What next?" I asked.

"We clean up," she laughed, sliding the baking sheet in the oven. "450 for, oh, ten or so minutes. You'll know when they're done." I scoffed a little at how easy she made it seem. Almost as if she were teasing me, she smiled as she washed off her hands. "Simple, right? Just three ingredients, a little bit of work, and voila."

"I think I'll let you keep making them," I admitted.

"You gotta practice," she said, wiping off the floury counter with a rag.

"I thought you said they were easy."

"I said they were simple," she corrected. "Simple doesn't always equal easy. It just equals... simple."

Simple. Watching the biscuits rise under the halo glow of the oven light, I didn't know exactly what she meant. How something so simple could be so complicated. Just three ingredients. A little hard work. You'll know it when it's right.

I wondered if I'd ever know what that meant.