Magic Skillet

My younger siblings probably assumed we were camping just for fun. What family wouldn’t want to get away from the sweltering city to the breezy, pine-scented woods?

But I was the oldest, nearly out of high school, and I was in on some grown-up realities, whether I liked it or not. I knew that we had packed up everything and headed to the national park to live in tents for the summer because we couldn’t afford rent.

Yet—it was still fun. We built forts, had pine cone fights, followed trails, sat up late around a dwindling campfire. Sunny days were for exploring. Rainy days were for marathon card games in a tent. Bedtime was for telling stories or listening to the whispered narrative of the night.

At the epicenter of our inside-out home, my mother set up her pioneer kitchen: a cooler for a fridge, a campfire and a grill for a stove, a big pot of water refilled from the pump for a sink. The picnic table was dining room and living room. Bathrooms were in the park guest center, a stroll down the dirt lane.

What do you feed a family of eight while camping? Mountain air and lots of sandwiches. PBJ mostly, or sometimes bologna with a generous wallop of mayo. Once, with all of us huddled in our car during a windy downpour, my mother systematically unwrapped cheese slices and tucked them between two sheets of white bread. She dispensed these one by one until everyone had their fill.

We also became cautious foragers. We crowed when we found a crabapple tree or—treasure!—a blackberry bush. Nothing tastes so primal as food with a direct commute from plant to mouth. And every now and then we roasted fresh-caught fish over the coals, swaddled in tinfoil.

Our campsite was so homey, it was easy to forget that we were there because we were homeless.

One afternoon, my siblings were all away from the campsite, exploring down at the creek with their dad. Mom and I were alone, and in the blessed quiet I was enjoying my book.

“Are you hungry?” It took a few moments for Mom’s question to drift into the story realm I had been lost in.

I was a teenager and always hungry, but I hesitated. I knew what was in our cooler. There were a few aging carrots, withering and brown at the tips. There was a sagging bag of flour. There was a half-empty jar of jelly and a half-full can of lard. A few loose slices of American cheese. Together with a box of condiments and the bag of sandwich bread and peanut butter, that was the extent of our pantry.

So I answered, “Not really.”

But my mom knew better. She always knew. “I’ll make you something.”

I couldn’t imagine what, so I watched.

She set her trusty, rusty cast iron skillet on the campfire, balanced on flat rocks like islands in the flame, then dropped in a scoop of lard to sizzle. She tipped flour into a mixing bowl, then stirred in water by increments, pouring it sparingly from the pitcher we kept on the picnic table. From time to time she added bits of lard. When the dough reached the right consistency—somewhere between pancake batter and bread dough—she asked me to pass the carton of salt.

“It only takes a pinch,” she told me.

She scooped a generous ladle of the mixture into the pan. The sizzle became a shriek as Mom used the spatula to flatten the dough into a circle in the hot grease. The fry bread crackled and hissed, wafting out a warm and comforting aroma. It was a hug of a smell.

After just the right amount of time, Mom flipped the flatbread, revealing the abstract pattern charred onto the other side. Then my mother scooped up her round, bumpy creation and held it out to me. “Here you go, sweetheart,” she said.

I took it straight from the spatula, passing it from hand to hand until it cooled.

And as I remember this long-ago moment, I'm there. I'm right there. I bite in, and the crisp exterior gives way to the bread’s savory, airy soul. I taste warmth and fullness. I taste lard that bubbled on cast iron. I taste the pinch of salt that makes all the difference. I taste magic.

How did my mother do it? How did she turn that sad, bare cooler into the best thing I’ve ever eaten?

In that place in my heart that is always summer, I can taste it still. One bite of memory and I am filled up with remembering it all, from the dirt that sticks to the pine sap on my fingers, to the delicious night breeze through my tent flap, to the secret language of rustling leaves, and the impossibly big, impossibly close platinum moon rising over the trees.

And -- I am with my mother, now gone over twenty years, still working her magic. She is smiling at me, and holding out a steaming circle of love.

* * *

I have eaten flatbread since, but never reproduced that taste. There’s eating, and then there’s experiencing magic.

At least I’ve figured out one essential ingredient: the exquisitely satisfying essence of not much to give but love.

You can follow a recipe to make this most ordinary of foods, but make sure you also follow your heart. And when you serve your flatbread, I invite you to imagine the person who loves you most, holding it out with a smile, and saying:

“Here you go, sweetheart."