A is for Advent: A Three-Year-Old's Perspective

T is for Tactile

Timmy loves to cook. At least, he thinks he does. Mum hasn't done any cooking with him yet, but he sees Dad making coffees for her in the mornings, and it looks like fun. The closest he can do is to take the lid off his sippy-cup and stir the water with his yoghurt spoon, but he calls that cooking, because there's nothing wrong with his imagination.

Mum has a block of yellow stuff in a glass bowl now, and she's cutting it up.

"Wossat, Mummy?" Timmy asks. "That cheese?" It looks like cheese. Sort of.

"It's butter," Mum says.

"Oh. Is butter." Timmy hasn't seen Mum use that much before. Usually she's just spreading it on his toast. It's never as much as that. She's pouring brown sugar over the butter mound, now.

When she puts a wooden spoon in the bowl, Timmy can't resist. "Timmy help you! Timmy help you cooking!" 

He moves before she can answer. He runs into the kitchen and stretches up to the bench, balanced on tiptoes, and grabs the handle of the wooden spoon. It feels rough. It makes it easy to hold.

"No, no, Timmy, I—" Mum starts. She has her hand wrapped around his on the spoon, stilling it. "Uh... Okay. Bring your chair in."

Timmy feels like he just might explode from excitement. Real cooking! "Okay, yes, yes, okay!" he says as he hurries to fetch his child-sized chair, often used as a step stool. "I get my chair! I get my chair! I get— Put it here?" He pushes it against the front of dishwasher. The bowl is right above it.

"Yes, there's good," Mum says. Timmy sees she'd found a measuring spoon and a can of something, while he was getting his chair.

"Now, Timmy," she says, "I need a spoon of this to go into the bowl, six times." She opens the can and Timmy reaches for the spoon. "I'll hold your hand the first time," she says, and she gives him the spoon.

Timmy grasps the hard plastic of the spoon handle, and feels Mum's hand wrap around his. The stuff inside the can is goopy, and almost white. It looks like glue.

"Whaddisit, Mummy?" he says.

"Sweetened condensed milk," Mum says. She guides his hand to dip the spoon into the can.

Timmy didn't catch that. "Whaddisit?" he says again.

"Very sweet stuff," Mum says. "Now, count the spoons for me." She lifts his hand to bring the spoon out and tilts it over the bowl. Timmy sees the goopy white stuff snake over the pile of butter and sugar, and fall down the sides. 

"One..." Timmy says. His enthusiasm is telling him to plunge the spoon into the can at speed, and he tries to, but he feels Mum's hand restraining him as she guides him through the next one. "...Two..." 

Apparently she's changed her mind about only holding his hand the first time. She does it for all six. She takes the measuring spoon from him and throws it into the sink, then moves his hand to the wooden spoon. 

"Now, we're going to stir it," she says, "but very slowly and gently."

Timmy's too excited to do anything slowly or gently, but he resolves to do his best. He's excited to be cooking with Mum for the first time. 

Mum usually says she's too busy for him to do this, but his little brother's not home right now. Maybe that's why she's letting him cook. She has more time for him when his brother's not around. She yells less, too.

His excitement compounds when he sees Mum get an even bigger bowl and pour crushed biscuits into it. She gets another wooden spoon and buries its head in the biscuit crumbs. She turns to the sink to rinse the first wooden spoon as she says, "We're going to be stirring that one, soon—"

She's cut off by a shower of biscuit crumbs. 

Timmy couldn't help it. He was so excited to stir in the big bowl, and the biscuit crumbs had been lighter than he'd expected. The spoon had flung a heap right out.

Timmy feels some land on his feet—dry and gritty—but he barely notices. He's stunned by the view of them falling onto Mum's hair, onto her clothes, and onto the floor. 

Timmy doesn't breathe. Mum won't like this at all. She's still and quiet. She hasn't turned around. Timmy waits, frozen, for her to order him out the kitchen.

Her shoulders lift and lower as she takes a breath and releases it. She turns around.

"Just...wait," she says. Somewhat redundantly.

Stirring the butter mixture into the biscuit is a much tougher job, so they both hold the wooden spoon together, to combine them. Mum makes them do it slowly.

He helps her press the mixture into a slice tin, but when he licks his hand Mum takes the tin away. She says he has to wash his hands again if he wants to keep helping. 

Timmy sprints to the bathroom and washes his hands as fast as he can. When he comes back to the kitchen, he's pleased to see the biscuit mix still there. Mum's already pressed it into the tin with a spoon, but she lets him pat it more, anyway.

It has to cook now, but Mum says they're using the fridge, not the oven.

Timmy loves to cook. 

He knows that for a fact.