They say that a picture is worth a thousand words, and so, an old, faded photograph of one special day in 1961 inspires me to share this memory.  Like the picture, my memory has faded, but glimpses of that ecstatic morning are faintly present fifty years later.  Barely able to remember the picture actually being taken, there’s a fleeting image in the way back recesses of my mind of the events leading up to the moment where Mom and Dad ushered me out into the front yard of the old house on Walnut St. for the photo op.  It must have been late winter or very early spring, because the black and white photo highlights the snow covered pavement on the road behind us.  Standing in the front yard clothed only in a tee shirt and jeans, with no winter coat to brace me from the chill, Mom snapped a photo with her trusty Brownie 4×5 camera box and rushed me back inside to the warmth of hearth and home.  I don’t recall the cold that allowed the snow to remain, for the embers of donut excitement burned so brightly within me, that I was singularly responsible for the onslaught of global warming.  Yes, it was my fault that the arctic snow cap is in perilous danger of melting away, all because a four year old little girl hugged a platter of homemade, still warm from the fryer, powdered sugar donuts, the smile and pure joy on my little face that morning enough to melt polar ice, and certainly my heart these many years later.   This photo, and this story transport me to a time, at least a day, where our slice of Americana played out as it should, safe and warm, gathered in the big, green kitchen helping Mom make this donut memory.

I can scarcely remember what I had for lunch yesterday, but I remember with exacting detail kneeling atop the old barstool, positioned just high enough to peer over the counter top and witness Mom preparing the donut dough.  The old bar stool didn’t match any other furniture that I recall, out of place with it’s faux brass legs and ticky tacky very 1950’s turquoise plastic seat, a perfect perch for a four year old to be part of the donut action, but safely out of the way. The aroma of the yeasty dough ball rising in the well used yellow mixing bowl, tucked in with a kitchen towel, signaled we were inching closer to donut time.  I can think of nothing more boring or exciting than watching a yeast dough rise and punching it down, only to rise again.  The mixing bowl filled with its manna nestled close to the stove’s warmth to aid those little yeast fungi to leaven the lump, and leaven they did.  To a four year old yet to be indoctrinated with the principles of chemistry, this gooey, growing mass in the yellow bowl was a thing of wonderment.  Rising before my eyes, bigger, bigger, bigger still.  It’s true what they say about viewing life and the world through the eyes of a child, everything new and untainted, joyful.  So it is my desire that upon reading this story, you will look today at your life, with the wide eyed wonderment with which I first glimpsed the rising ball of dough, with a newness, a simplicity, and a new found joy.

The donut dough now prepared, Mom cut the spheres with a knowing precision that indicated she had done this before.  On the stove in a large, deep cast iron pot the hot oil made itself ready for the onslaught of donut dough.   I perched safely, but close enough to the pot of hot oil to see Mom gently drop the round wads of yeast dough into the fryer.  The dough danced around on the surface, and my giddy heart danced right along with them.  Floating atop the hot oil, transforming into golden brown deliciousness, Mom poked the bobbing, dancing donuts with the handle of a long, wooden spoon prodding them as a conductor would his symphony orchestra.  The other end of that spoon was on occasion wielded across my fanny and the shrill cry of a stinging spank, was music to no one’s ears.  The donuts now a beautiful caramel color, she swooped in with a wire strainer and rescued those little darlings from a too crispy fate.  Placed on waiting layers of brown paper grocery bags, the one’s we used to use before we knew that the forests were being destroyed by millions of homemakers carrying their weekly grocery provisions back to the homestead. The brown bags soaked in the excess oil and formed a big, greasy spot around each newly minted donut.  Allowing the obligatory cooling down time so as not to burn fingers, lips, or tongue, Mom reached for one of the donuts and gently pried it apart releasing the scented steam of warm dough, and revealing a soft inside speckled with freshly ground nutmeg.  Can you smell them? Ah, warm donuts fresh from the fryer, yeasty dough laden with nutmeg.  I can see and smell that blissful, homemade aroma, as if it were today.  The donut cool down period complete, I was enlisted into the donut army with a solitary task entrusted only to me.  The aforementioned brown paper bags with their greasy stains and all, were tossed into the garbage pale.  A family of six generates a lot of grocery bags, so out of the kitchen pantry came another bag, this one to be filled with powdered, confectioner’s sugar.  My mission was to shake the donuts in the bag of sugar blanketing them with that powdery goodness.  I assumed my mission with a shake vigorous enough to cause a mini confectionary cloud to erupt from the bag, showering not only the donuts, but me. Poof!  Looking up at Mom thinking I was going to get the bad end of the wooden spoon for not holding the sugar bag tightly closed, Mom just laughed, and lovingly held my sugar covered little face in her hands and smiled.  Shaking off the extra powder that didn’t cling to the donuts, she placed the doughy rounds on a platter, and yelled for my father to get her camera from the den.  Mom and Dad hustled me outside to the front yard for the photo op, too excited to put my coat on. She snapped the picture.

All that remains of that day is the photo of a little girl holding a platter of warm, sugary donuts with a smile strewn across her face that tells the story of making homemade, nutmeg donuts with my Mom in the big, green kitchen.