My mom hated the smell of maple syrup.
She loathed it so much that she couldn’t even tolerate adding it to my plate for me to eat with the Eggo waffles she served on hurried school mornings. And when she spent a short stint working with preschool-aged children, she would gag when the sticky matter inevitably became matted in their hair and caked to their tiny hands during the breakfast meal. Per my mom, they weren’t allowed to return to the classroom until they washed all traces of syrup from head to toe.
If she could smell syrup, she was gagging.
My mom, who has now been gone for nearly 12 years, had a handful of peculiarities that we loved to poke her for. Her maple syrup aversion, though, is one that I recall most vividly and most warmly.
This morning I thought about her and the maple syrup as I made my 9-month-old son blueberry pancakes for the first time. He is exploring new foods with great pleasure, and last night as I stopped at the grocery store to collect ingredients for our breakfast, I couldn’t help but be excited about this “first” Jack and I were going to share.
I don’t cook much — let’s face it, my husband is the primary food provider in our home — but pancakes are something I do whip up on occasion and they are something I make well. So, you can imagine the joy I felt as Justin plopped Jack down in his highchair at 7 a.m. and I served him his first silver dollar sized pancake packed with warm blueberries that exploded when squeezed just right by little hands and the tiniest teaspoon of sugar-free maple syrup on the side.
Somehow — and I am still trying to figure out how — that teeny, tiny dollop of syrup turned into the exact right amount of paint my baby needed to create his masterpiece all over the wall, his highchair, and the dog. Before I knew it, there was gooey syrup everywhere, and it was running down Jack’s hands and arms as he smiled and laughed. Obviously, he was very pleased with himself.
And then it hit me: The pungent smell of pancake syrup on tiny hands. Suddenly, as I fought back my own gag reflex and tried to hose off my boy and all of his mess, I knew why my mom so fiercely avoided maple syrup and children all those years.
I had to laugh to keep from crying because I missed my mom so deeply in that simple, syrup soaked moment.
There have been countless times throughout my motherhood journey — as Justin and I spent a year and a half trying to conceive, when I had my miscarriage, when we found out I was pregnant with Jack and throughout my entire pregnancy, when he was born, and through each milestone and even every normal, ordinary day — that I have wished my mom could be here.
This morning, though, I wish she were here to witness my own syrup snafu. Or, I wish she were at least a phone call away. She would have been on the floor rolling with laughter as I tried to clean up Jack’s mess, and she most certainly would have been gagging with me from the smell of pancake syrup on tiny hands.
