One, Two, Three, Gently All-Around

Writing this week about mum, and how her memory lives on in what we do - expect knitting and crafting, cake baking and bowl licking and a big dollop of love.

My granddaughter is hardly through the door when she asks, ‘Can we bake a cake, Nanny?’ And so, every Friday, on the day we look after her (she’s three), my first-morning coffee barely drunk, she climbs onto a chair, and we both put on our pinnies.  My mum and grandmothers taught me to bake cakes, and I’m thinking this week about how a person’s memory lives on in what we do.

It’s amazing that at three Luna knows how to cream the butter and sugar and can ‘crack an egg’ as she calls it, whooping with delight when there’s no shell to fish out. But then the fun really starts. She knows to put down the wooden spoon, pick up the metal tablespoon and once the self-raising flour has been softly seived, to sing ‘one, two, three, gently all around as the mix is scored once, twice, thrice and then stirred gently to keep as much of that precious air in the mix that will help it to rise.

‘One, two, three, gently all-around! One, two, three, gently all-around’ and then Nanny has a turn as we scrape the mix from the sides and it’s into the tin and after asking for the tenth time, ‘Can I lick the bowl, Nanny?’ she does.

I taught my children how to bake cakes and this refrain of one, two, three, gently all around was taught to them and they sang it too. I hope when little Luna bakes cakes with her children, they too will know to go ‘one, two, three, gently all around and will watch as their cakes magically rise. My youngest son has asked if he could please inherit my mixing bowl when I die. He was able to make a chocolate cake from memory at quite a young age, and still, at almost thirty makes me my birthday cake in February. Cakes are important in our family and always were, and are a link that binds me to the matriarchs of my past.

As those of you who have read my previous posts will know, my Mum died in July this year. I wrote about how we find her in a piece I wrote shortly after her death, The Presence of Absence, and I suppose this post is a continuation of that theme, but one with more of a purpose. The purpose of keeping her memory alive through what I do, and in particular through cooking and crafting.

Cake out of the oven and scoffed, Luna’s attention turned to William and Doris, two of my childhood dolls. They both have a full set of clothes, knitted by mum (she named them, too) – little boots, pants, trousers, socks, scarf and hats. The love and care that went into these are obvious, and as I sit and do my knitting now, I think of Mum, her pot of knitting needles, sewing box and a pile of mending by her chair, and how crafting was such an important part of being a mum and granny for her. It is an inherited love, and as I knit a row of little elephants around the base of a baby cardi, excited at the prospect of becoming a Nanny for the third time, (my eldest son and his wife are expecting their first baby in January) I think of mum, and her mum, and how the generations may pass, but their light carries on through what we do. I taught my daughter how to knit, and already Luna sits with a tangle of wool, jabbing two fat circular needles into the yarn, ‘knitting like Nanny’ and I hope that Luna will carry my memory on this way after I am dead and gone.

This piece was inspired by a card sent to me by two dear friends on Mum’s passing. I thought at the time how moving these words were, but as I write this piece, I realise just how much her memory does indeed live on through my children and grandchildren. I hope that when I am dead and gone, my memory will live on too through cooking and crafting, and the refrain of ‘one, two, three, gently all around’ will continue to be sung with many cakes made and bowls licked.

I’ll say cheerio now, I want to go out into the autumn sunshine and pick a few flowers for the dining room table.

The Michaelmas daisies are in flower and the Red Admirals loved them as much as you did, Mum. Can you see them? I hope so!