For about a month, I wasn’t much of a cook after my December 20th ankle surgery. Once I graduated to a walking boot cast, I took back the dinner chore, but while I was on crutches for four weeks, my family stepped up to take on most of my regular tasks.
My husband, Curt, took over the cooking, shopping, and driving, while Leah, my 10-year-old, learned to do her own laundry. My eight-year-old son, too small to do his own laundry, decided to master the art of cheese omelets in his own bid to help out.
One morning, he offered to make me one.
As I balanced on my crutches in the kitchen, sort of to oversee things I suppose, Ty set to work. Standing on a chair in front of the stove, he cracked two eggs into a glass (sans shell), poured in a little milk, and whipped the contents with a fork, just as I’d taught him for scrambled eggs. He melted a little butter in the frying pan, poured in the mixture, and watched the eggs bubble, a rubber spatula at the ready in his small hand. I couldn’t help noticing the flame under the pan—a little high—and that he hadn’t grated the cheese yet. Also that the egg was cooking a little hot. And the cheese still wasn’t grated. And that he wasn’t lifting the edge of omelet to tilt the uncooked egg under the cooked egg as I’ve shown him many times.
He must have sensed me opening my mouth because I know he couldn’t see my face with his back to me (am I so predictable?). “Mom,” he said without turning, “I know this isn’t how you like to make omelets. I know you like to pick up the edge and pour the egg under itself. But I like to let it cook just like this until it’s done. And it works.”
My mouth snapped shut. Apparently, I am this predictable. I watched him for a moment, the way he concentrated on his creation, the way he knew exactly when it would be done, and then I slunk off to the dining room—as much as you can slink off on crutches—to wait for my omelet.
A few minutes later, with a wide smile, Ty served it to me on a plate, a precise half-moon of yellow with a hem of melted cheese and no scorch marks. He knew it was perfect.
It was.