Wonderful pancakes for a gluten-free diet. |
Sunday Worthy Gluten-Free Pancakes
When I was small and clueless I ate the world in tiny bites. I chewed apologetically, counting each deliberate grind in time to the spiral beats of a song in my head that only I could hear. A tune not unlike a mosaic of bird calls, and the powdery flutter of wings feeding on the garden lit by young Mozart's star.
Colors were a mysterious and spiritual language infused with deep logic and meaning. A lime green Jello box invited tunneling and confusion, but the sweet brush of balsam as I sought asylum beneath its rooted symmetry petted my pining fatherless heart.
Trust is green and hard to paint, but so is betrayal.
Not only the betrayal by others. The betrayal you participate in. The hammering of your spirit self into propriety. The brittle, safe shell you construct and will curl inside for the rest of your life. You inhabit it sullenly. Sometimes willingly. Because sometimes it works. Mostly to fool them. Fool them into thinking you are someone else. Someone uncomplicated they can love. Someone like themselves.
In order to keep this armor snug you must give up on certain pieces of yourself. The ugly, muddy parts those in charge find distasteful or irritating or inscrutable. What no one tells you is, you end up missing these rejected quirks and knots. And spend the rest of your life searching for all those abandoned bits and wrinkles. The shining fragments of earlier music and jewels of petaled rain.
But if you are lucky you meet a painter.
A soul adept at conjuring a thicket within their non-judging arms. You learn about green and its secret origin. How to stir ivory black with cadmium yellow and a teaspoonful of cerulean. You dream of butterscotch pines and inhale and your spirit-body becomes too big for the worn out shell.
So you crack it.
Sideways at first. Sticking out fingers and elbows when no one is looking. Digging out fragments long forgotten. Rubbing off neglect and holding wobbly pale parts of yourself closer to the sunlight.
And you meet yourself for the first time in a long, long time.
In the rays escaping.
***
I use a stove top griddle across two burners on medium-high heat. |
For the first time in a long, long time I made pancakes.
Because I craved a family Sunday with pancakes.
And The Beatles.
And lots of maple syrup.
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