Pancakes & Other Lies

It seemed so simple. The idea of making pancakes had always seemed like such an easy thing for me when I was a kid. I grew up watching my parents make them. My sister made them. And as I got older I saw my friends and roommates make them. But now, as I stood in front of the mixing bowl, I realized there was something in me that must be broken, because the simplest of instructions made no sense to me. In all honesty, I had never cooked for myself. I was and have always been a big fan of the frozen meals and if any accountant looked at my finances they would tell me I definitely needed to spend less on eating out. 

I was a professional restaurant visitor, and the unfortunate part of it all was I had always known that but I had lied to every person I had dated about the fact that I could actually cook. 

Maybe it was my defense mechanism. I had excelled at everything else and a part of me had always assumed I would be good at this too. I just never knew because I had never tried. Much as I had lied to everyone about my abilities in the kitchen, I had also lied to myself. 

I am a thirty-seven year old that can't make pancakes. It was clear looking at the bowl that I had missed something in the directions. 

Why is it so thick?

Should I add water?

Would they eventually become fluffy if I willed them to?

If I continue to whisk the bowl, maybe the repetitive act of mixing would do something. Maybe that would help?

No. No. That's not doing a thing.

"Hey-- how's it going in there?"

"Fine, I must have bought the wrong kind of mix, it's not looking like it should."

"What do you mean? A Mix is a mix. Do you want me to come out and help?"

"No. No. I'll figure it out."

I hope I can figure this out.

M had become a staple in the apartment as of recently and I desperately wanted it to continue that way, but if I couldn't figure this out then I might be saying goodbye to both the relationship and my ego. 

Dating at this point in my life seemed to come with a set of higher expectations-- both from myself and those I chose to date. 

It wasn't enough to have a job that was secure and good on paper, it was also important that you had the right look-- clothes, home or rental, and an impressive list of qualifications: which is where cooking had landed. 

I positioned myself as capable-- I had all the right tools and a slew of beautiful cookbooks on my kitchen counter. I had the look, but I clearly didn't have the skill. 

I could just order some pancakes from the diner down the street and just pretend to step out and get them... but wouldn't M realize I never turned on the stove?

It was clear. I had no way of faking this. 

I needed to make pancakes happen on my own. 

So I added a little water, prayed, and turned on the stove. 

The consistency seemed to get better, less clumpy, but now was it too watery?

I whisked and whisked and all of a sudden I realized I had no idea what it was supposed to look like. I had never seen a pancake before it was a fully formed thing. 

"I'm coming in there."

"No, no, no. I got it."

I stood at the kitchen door willing M to stay in the bedroom. If they came in it would only make it worse. They would have figured it out. 

"Well okay, I'm giving you 10 more minutes and if there's no pancakes I'm going to have to come in there and make them myself."

"Don't be silly. It's pancakes. I've done this a million times." I hadn't. But how badly I wanted that to be the truth should have counted for something. 

The pan had warmed and I threw caution to the wind. Pouring the liquid substance onto the pan I saw it form itself into a circle. 

Maybe they'll be okay after all. Maybe I actually pulled it off.

And then I saw my reality as I flipped it over. It was brown. Not golden brown, but dark brown-- actually closer to burned black. 

How was it possible? It was only on there for a minute?

I lowered the heat, hoping that the other side would come out golden and I could hide this side on the bottom. I pulled it off the pan and flipped it over, but the other side was closer to black than any hue of brown. 

The battle raged on. And within a matter of minutes I had burned every single pancake that never came to be fully realized. 

"Why does it smell like smoke?"

"Oh you know, sometimes things get smoky."

They did, didn't they?

"Don't worry. It's all coming together."

"Is it now? Cause it definitely doesn't smell or look like it."

M had found their way into the kitchen when I wasn't paying attention. The jig was up. My pancakes were a failure-- I was a failure.

I didn't know what to say, and they didn't say all they did was poke at the burned remains of what I had cooked. 

"So, I'm guessing that we're not going to be having pancakes this morning?"

"Uh... I don't know what happened. They usually come out so good when I make them."

Lie. Lie. Lie as fast you can. They won't know. 

But then on M's face, you could see it clearly-- the all knowing look of someone who's found someone in their lie. 

"You've never cooked pancakes before have you?"

"Of course I have. Just because I had a bad batch doesn't mean I don't know how to cook."

"I could understand a bad one-- we all have bad ones... but an entire bowl of burned batter... that's a new level."

Lie. Lie. Come up with something better.

But I couldn't lie. I couldn't say anything anymore. I had exhausted myself trying to succeed and now I had no words left to say. 

"I don't know why you think you need to lie about this. About any of it. They're just pancakes after all."

"It's not just the pancakes. It's everything. I feel like I've been trying so hard to impress everyone in my life that the cooking lie is just a small part of the whole lie."

I didn't know what happened. Words just flew out of my mouth and now I couldn't stop myself from unloading all the truth to M. Unloading decades of this version of myself that I built. I wasn't ready to tell them everything, but here I was just letting it all go.

"I don't know why you think that you need to lie to me about anything. You're way too hard on yourself."

"I've always been this way. The need to impress-- the need to be better than everyone else. I was raised in a home where being good wasn't good enough. I had to be the best, so I always strive to be the best. And in the spaces where I couldn't be the best, I filled it in with lies. With white lies that seemed to mimic what people expected of me. And I know that it sounds wild and crazy that this is something that I grew up doing, but that's who I am and I didn't want to unload all of this on you. But I just don't know what else to say... these pancakes..."

"They're just pancakes. Or what could have been pancakes. Don't kill yourself over pancakes. Don't worry about this. This is something we can fix, something that I can teach you how to do. Hell, there's thousands of YouTube tutorials on how to cook-- you are more than capable of learning it, if you want to. But the question here is... do you want to?"

I didn't know. I didn't know anymore what I wanted to do, what I wanted to learn-- who I wanted to be. I'm thirty-seven and having a full on crisis in my kitchen, crying over burned batter. How easily we all fall apart. 

M pulled me close. Wrapped their arms around me and didn't say anything. Neither one of us did for the next hour. 

We sat like that on the floor of the kitchen, me silently crying into their shoulder while they let me loose. 

The sunlight started to move in the kitchen, and the empty feeling in both of our stomachs echoed in the space between us. 

"Hey. Let's get out of this mess. I have an idea."

M pulled me into their car and we drove down the street to the diner. As we sat down, the waitress handed us copies of the menu. 

"So what will you guys be having?"

I picked up the menu that was sticky to the touch and looked at M for any cues. 

"I don't know about you. But I could really go for a stack of pancakes."