Chair share

Some time not too long after kickoff for Sunday’s Super Bowl, I came across an unexpected sight: my two children nestled together in an oversized , cushioned wicker chair.

We were at a very large party, one we attend every year. By the host’s estimation, there were 40 to 50 kids in her house and two-thirds that number of adults. It was a big house, but it was also a lot of people. When the buffet dinner was served just a few minutes before game time, people helped themselves and found a spot wherever they were comfortable, based on their level of interest in the game: serious football fans parked themselves in front of one of the three TVs playing throughout the house; mildly engaged fair-weather fans (as in “I’ll pay attention once the playoffs start”) stood in a loose circle around those gathered in tight by the TVs; those who cared more about eating than watching sat at a table or at the rec room bar (in case it’s not clear, this big house is extremely well furnished).

There was room for everyone, but wherever you went, there were a lot of people. My 8-year-old and her 12-year-old brother had filled their plates, with a little help from me, with chicken wings, hot dogs, rolls, salad and chips and wandered off in search of a place to perch. But I didn’t expect them to choose the spot where I found them a few minutes later: together in a wide comfortable chair.

With the overbearing interest that mothers devote to the sibling relationships of their children, I wish I could have overheard the conversation or witnessed the choreography that led to their sitting down. Did one of them say, “Here’s a chair big enough for both of us!”? Or, more likely, did one grab the chair and yield half of it only at the other’s insistence (which I knew would have taken the form of stern threatening if it were Tim and nails-on-chalkboard whining if it were Holly)? When my sisters and I were my kids’ age, we used to call this “chair-sharing,” and as I remember, we often did it with jollity, although my guess is that there were other occasions with chair controversies that I’m conveniently forgetting.

In any case, it pleased me beyond reason to see the kids elbow to elbow, eating their Super Bowl fare. Tim and Holly are four years apart in age, and in general they get along fairly well for siblings. When people comment on this, I often say that being as far apart in age as they are and different sexes, there’s very little for them to compete over. Nonetheless, the flip side of not having a lot to fight over is sometimes not having a lot that binds them. They enjoy different hobbies and sports, play with different toys, and aren’t particularly interested in each other’s friends.

But like most parents, I put a great deal of stock in finding evidence that they care deeply about each other. When I was growing up, I didn’t really understand why it bothered my mother so much when my sisters and I quarreled, which we did fairly often: where the three of us were each two years apart and all girls, we had none of the safeguards that protect Tim and Holly. As I remember it, there was plenty over which to argue.

And I didn’t see why my mother cared. It was between us. But now I get it. It’s not just the annoying sound of kids sniping at each other: it’s the profound awareness that when all is said and done, siblings are often each other’s last resort. When friends and partners fail you, it’s only normal to look toward your siblings. And so as children grow, parents naturally look for evidence that their children are building that kind of support system for each other and take longlasting comfort from believing in a bond that will sustain their children through whatever each one is destined to face.

I may be putting too much stock in the simple act of finding my children sharing a large chair, but still, the sight stayed in my memory long after the dinner was over and Tim had gone off to play ping pong with a friend. I don’t know what kind of negotiation if any led to the chair-share, but whatever it was, whether intrinsically harmonious or initially explosive, the kids worked it out themselves. And seeing this fleeting moment, two kids sitting pressed up against each other as they eat chicken wings, gave me a welcome pang of hope for their shared future.

I need a recipe...

My sister was laughing as I answered the phone. “You’re not going to believe why I’m calling.”

I knew immediately. “You need my recipe for mud pie cake.”

It’s an ongoing joke with us. For the past thirty years, every place she has ever lived, she’s called me for the mud pie cake recipe. It’s an inexplicable coincidence that this is the one recipe she never remembers to hold on to, though perhaps Freud would point out here that there are no accidents. She and I both love to cook; there are literally hundreds if not thousands or recipes she could be calling me for. But it’s always the mud pie cake recipe, which has been in our family for decades, a moist chocolate cake with a name that amuses kids.

The first time was when she was a teenager doing a summer homestay in Switzerland. There was a birthday in her host family, and she wanted to impress them with our trusty family recipe for this most all-American of treats: basic chocolate cake.

She called for the same recipe from Ohio when she was a freshman in college. Then there was the call from Austria while she was an exchange student. The mud pie cake recipe followed her around the globe – through Europe and then back to subsequent residencies in Rhode Island, Massachusetts and Pennsylvania, where she and her husband and children have more or less permanently settled. Since they’ve lived there for so long, I assumed the recipe was safely stashed at last and I wouldn’t be getting any more calls. But no, they still travel, and wherever they go, she gets the urge to use the kitchen, and for some reason remembers to bring along every recipe she wants except for this one. So in the past five years, I’ve gotten the SOS call from locales including southern France, Colorado, and Indiana. Now they’re spending a sabbatical year in Germany, and sure enough, she wants to bake a cake.

Yesterday she claimed that as I read her the recipe, she was transcribing it into an electronic file on her laptop and would therefore never need to ask me again. I’m skeptical. If it was that easy, why wouldn’t she have done this years ago? No, there has to be something more nuanced about it. It’s not like we ordinarily have a hard time talking. We discuss our kids, books we’ve read, our parents and their idiosyncrasies (by the hour, believe me), gifts to jointly give our other sister, exercise programs, the weather. We talk about all kinds of things. And yet it’s the cake that keeps her calling.

This cake recipe has been in our family for a very long time. Unlike many cake recipes, it’s absolutely foolproof; there’s nothing delicate about it. I remember making it in playgroup under my mother’s guidance when I was three years old, and I used to make it for bake sales in junior high. I don’t know much about the cake’s history, but because the recipe includes no milk or butter – no dairy products at all – as well as no chocolate in solid form and no eggs, I suspect it was a Depression-era recipe that bakers invented in order to make a cake out of inexpensive, readily available ingredients. Yet you wouldn’t know it from the taste: it’s moist and delicious, as well as really fun to make, especially for kids. “Water the garden!” my mom used to say back in playgroup days as each child had a turn to add one of the liquid ingredients and then stir. Now I make it with my kids, and both my sisters make it with theirs.

If it guarantees regular phone calls from my sister, no matter where in the world she happens to be, then I actually hope she never does remember to bring the recipe with her – or, worse, memorize it. I like these regular phone calls from across the globe. Mud pie cake batter: the ultimate sororal glue. In our family, anyway.

For those who are curious about this baking tradition, here’s the recipe:

Mud Pie Cake

1 ½ cups flour
3 tablespoons cocoa
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 cup sugar
½ teaspoon salt
5 tablespoons vegetable oil
1 tablespoon cider vinegar
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 cup cold water

Preheat oven to 350. Combine dry ingredients well in a large mixing bowl. Then stir in remaining ingredients one at a time, mixing well after each addition. (You can do this with an electric mixer or by hand.) Pour batter into a greased 8-inch or 9-inch cake pan or brownie pan. Bake for about 30 minutes.