Hi friends!
I’m honestly not great at writing “cozy” stories. Even this one could be interpreted as less than cozy. But when I read this prompt this morning from
, I was hit with inspiration. So here it is.Prompt: Your item won’t work unless you’re telling a story.
The Magic’s in the Mixer
Since the dawn of time (and kitchens), there has never been a sadness that cannot be cured by baked goods.
At least, that’s what I tell myself as I struggle with my mom’s old aquamarine-colored stand mixer. It’s been a year since it’s been used. A whole year since she and I baked our last batch of snickerdoodles together. But it would seem there will be no soft, gooey cookies for my grieving soul today—not unless I can find my hand mixer.
“These were her favorite,” I mutter to no one in particular. A tear rolls down my cheek and plops into the metal bowl where the butter and sugar sit, waiting to be beat. I give the old Kitchenaid a hefty whack. “Why won’t you just work?”
Squeezing my teary eyes shut in defeat, I rest my head against the cabinet above me. The smell of butter and cinnamon take me back to the days when Mom had just gotten this thing — before its shiny surface became permanently matted in caked-on flour dust and grubby children’s fingerprints. We should have been baking together today, for her birthday. But here I am, alone, unable to get this damn appliance to do the one thing it’s made to do.
An ugly, gurgle sniffling sound fills the room as I choke back my tears, willing myself to look for the hand mixer. Turning, I bump straight into my husband, Luke’s, chest. I hadn’t even heard him walk into the kitchen.
“You making snickerdoodles?” He whispers into my hair, squeezing me tightly.
Breathing in the familiar scent of his cologne, I curl my fingers into the pilled fabric of his favorite old t-shirt. I wish I could somehow just melt into him, like the butter sitting in the mixing bowl.
“Nicole? You okay?”
“Yeah,” I mumble, “It’s just…the mixer won’t work.”
“Remember what Grandma used to say?” My eleven-year-old, Dylan’s, voice wafts through the kitchen as he approaches us. “You just gotta hold your mouth right.”
“Your Grandma was a wise woman,” Luke smiles at our son, gently letting me go. “I need to go change the oil in the car. But if you still can’t get it to work after I’m done, I’ll take a look.”
He kisses me softly, and my heart flutters. Suddenly, I’m transported back to when we were teenagers, when my mom caught us smooching on the back deck.
We pull away from each other to find Dylan making gagging noises. I can’t help but chuckle as I wipe my eyes.
As Luke’s footsteps echo down the hall toward the garage, I take a deep breath and flip the switch on the mixer again. Nothing. Leaning against the counter, I stare down at the weathered pages of my Mom’s old Betty Crocker cookbook. It’s full of ink-smeared notes she’d penned in the margins about how her versions of the recipes were better.
“You know, your Grandma was incapable of following a recipe without adding her own special touch,” I smiled, running my finger along the faded image of perfectly golden brown cookies.
“Are there any more pop-tarts?” Dylan asks, apparently uninterested in my nostalgia as he stares into the open pantry next to me.
“Use your eyeballs, they’re right in front of you!”
Dylan huffs, finally locating the bright blue box. “Grandma used to say that,” he grins, ripping open the crinkly foil package and taking a huge bite of the processed breakfast pastry.
“She was the neighborhood sweetheart,” I smile, “She had a petty streak, though. I remember when the HOA president came over to inform her that the garden gnomes in the front yard had to go because they didn’t fit the ‘look’ for the street. Grandma moved the gnomes, but she was so bitter about it that she wrote an ‘apology’ note and left it with a plate of snickerdoodles on the president’s doorstep—only, they were baked with ground cumin instead of cinnamon!”
I’m so lost in the memory, I almost don’t hear the whirr of the mixer coming to life.
“Mom, look!” Dylan cries “It’s working!”
I whirl around, only to find the mixer still again. I flip the switch on and off again. Nothing.
“While you were talking about Grandma, it started! I swear it did,” Dylan’s mouth is agape, a trail of pop-tart crumbs sticking to his chin. “Tell another story.”
“Well, there was that time when I was just a little younger than you, and I discovered the truth about Santa’s cookies,” as I speak, the mixer churns to life, creaming the butter and sugar together in a steady rhythm. I try to maintain my cool, though I’m internally questioning my sanity. Surely I had just flipped the switch, hadn’t I?
“Keep going, Mom, before it turns off again!”
“Okay,” I take a shaky breath and continue, “We always left cookies out for Santa on Christmas Eve. And in the morning, they were gone. But one year, I got wise. I snuck downstairs and watched from the stairs. Sure enough, I saw Grandma and Grandpa sitting by the fire after I’d gone to bed, munching on the cookies.”
“Wait, Mom,” Dylan feigns a shocked expression. “You mean, Santa’s not real?”
“You goober!” I toss a small handful of flour at him. He walks up and smears his gooey pop-tart fingers on my sleeve.
“Ugh, you’re so gross!” I ruffle his hair, leaving streaks of white flour in it. I turn the mixer off (as I apparently had flipped the switch earlier), motioning to the remaining ingredients I’ve carefully laid out on the counter.
“You want to help me finish these, bud?”
“Sure!”
“Just wash your hands first!”
We finish prepping the cookie dough, talking over the sound of the ancient Kitchenaid chugging along. Dylan laughs about the time he tried to teach Grandma how to play Minecraft. I told him how she used to be able to get him to stop crying immediately by singing “I Can’t Help Myself” by the Four Tops. We both try to emulate her exact mannerisms as we crack the eggs and measure the vanilla. She had a particular flair in the way she dusted the tops of the cookies with cinnamon before placing them in the oven that I still can’t quite master.
As I’m closing the oven door, I glance over to catch Dylan, eyes closed, a smudge of dough clinging to the bridge of his nose.
“You okay, Bud?”
“Oh, yeah,” he flutters open his blue eyes, smiling at me with his crooked teeth. “I was just making a wish.”
“What did you wish for?” I ask as I set the timer.
“For you and I to bake snickerdoodles every year on Grandma’s birthday,” he whispers, throwing his lanky preteen arms around me.
I stand there, holding my baby boy who looks more and more like his father every day. But there’s a good bit of his Grandma in him—in his lopsided grin, quick wit, and his love of fun facts. It’s those little quirks I realize were passed down to him through me. Those little pieces of my mother’s spirit live on in us, along with our love of baked goods.
“Group hug!” Luke’s voice breaks my haze as his grease-smudged arms encircle Dylan and me.
“God, you’re basically a motor-oil covered ninja!” My voice comes out muffled as Luke squeezes us. “I didn’t even hear you walk in!”
“I see you got the mixer working,” Luke says as he finally lets us go. He takes a peek into the oven, taking a big whiff of the cookies.
“Yeah,” Dylan pipes up, “We just started telling stories about Grandma and it worked! Like magic!”
“Magic, huh?” Luke tucks a strand of my brown hair behind my ear. He leans in and whispers, “One of the kitchen breakers was tripped. I flipped it back. You’re welcome.”
I playfully smack his rear end with the old checkered dish rag as he turns to leave. “I gotta get back to work. Let me know when the cookies are done.”
“Wait, what did he say?” Dylan asks, watching his father saunter off to the garage.
“It was mushy-gushy stuff, you wouldn’t want to know,” I tease as I pull the mixing bowl from its stand. “Here, help me clean this all up.”
“Ooh, can I lick the beater? Grandma always let me!”
“Okay, okay.” I disconnect the metal attachment, sticky with sweet, unbaked goodness. I watch as Dylan licks it clean, wishing I could stay in this moment forever.
I wipe away more tears as I scrub the mixing bowl. One day, very soon, he’ll realize that the world isn’t all Minecraft and snickerdoodles. That sometimes, what you think is magic is really just a tripped breaker.
“Nonsense!”
I drop the mixing bowl with a clank into the sink. Was that…Mom?
“Mom, you okay?” Dylan asks, eyeing me with concern as he hands me the beater.
I nod, turning back to the dirty dishes. Then I hear it again, that honeyed southern drawl echoing against my skull. For a moment, I almost think I can see her face reflecting off the metal mixing bowl, winking at me.
“Come on, Sweetie. We both know it wasn’t the breaker.”
Thank you for reading! I wrote this story quickly today, and I challenged myself to just post it, even though it’s not perfect. Thank you all so much for reading. Now I’m hungry for snickerdoodles!
Light and Love,
Hallie
Can’t “love” this enough 🥹. I was smiling the whole time I read it. At the nostalgia it brought up for me, too, in the memories with family in the kitchen, at my own finicky hand-me-down kitchenaid that my grandma gave me, and at how real it all felt while simultaneously being so full of magic. Just lovely.
this is the kind of story that sneaks up on you ... gentle, warm, then suddenly it opens a door to grief and love in the same breath. You call it cozy, but it’s closer to sacred.
Beautiful work. You made grief smell like cinnamon and sound like laughter that’s no small thing.