No Recipe Crisp
A story about legacy and what you leave behind
The first crisp I tasted had been sitting out overnight. My piece was the last corner of last night’s dessert. Its strawberry innards were spilling out, and the oats were mushy, but it was topped with hand-whipped heavy cream.
I’d woken in the lower-level guest room of my sister’s two-story ranch. The house faced West, overlooking the North Coast Range from Ridge Road, but the guest room was built into the Eastern side of the house. Its only purpose was storing boxes that hadn’t found homes and holding up the living room above.
Walking upstairs, I was hit with sunlight streaming in through three sets of glass doors. The light was absorbed into the habanero chili walls of the living room and bounced off the marigold yellow walls of the dining room and kitchen.
“Here, start with this,” my sister handed me a heavy mug of hot coffee. Walking into the kitchen, she looked totally normal, with thin brown hair hanging down her back, but when she turned to open the fridge, I saw the full watermelon of her belly. It hung below the bottom of her Mills Basketball 2001 t-shirt, and I could see the tiger stripes of the stretch marks just above where her boys’ boxers started.
Shelley pulled a carton of heavy cream and a metal mixing bowl out of the fridge. Cradling the bowl between her left arm and her convex stomach, she poured the cream in and frothed it with a whisk. She whipped the cream with complete focus and determination. After three minutes of continual whipping, I offered to take a turn. She shook her head to decline, and I turned to stare out at the ocean of fog through the glass doors.
The cream eventually bubbled, then thickened, climbing the sides of the bowls. After another few minutes, she added powdered sugar, and when that was absorbed, the whipped cream was done. Shelley dolloped it straight into the baking dish and ontop of the leftover crisp. The crisp stuck to the bottom of the dish, the oats and brown sugar had melted into the strawberry filling. She pulled out two spoons, and we dueled for the best bite of toasted crisp and spun-sugar topping.
The crisp and Shelley’s fresh whipped cream became a staple. She made it for every birthday and for regular days too. The fillings were blackberry, stone fruits, rhubarb, and strawberry, or apples. She never measured anything and never timed her bakes. Sometimes the oats were gooey, and sometimes the sugar was burned like caramel, but the whipped cream was always fresh, beaten into stiff peaks, and handmade.
When Hunter turned 9, she made blueberry cupcakes with buttercream frosting, angel cake, and strawberry crisp, all topped with fresh berries and whipped cream.
That morning, I had driven two hours up 101 North to Willits from San Francisco. Getting to Shelley’s new place was easy; it was a left at the second stoplight after the Golden Gate Bridge. Turning at the 76 station, I scanned the houses for hers. She had moved about 6 months ago, and I had only been to her new place a few times.
On the left was the abandoned lumber mill. The property was fenced with chain link, and behind that, a weedy parking lot and a low factory building. On the right were gravel driveways and little yards, also fenced by chain link.
Halfway down the road on the left, and before the property line for the Public Storage, I saw Shelley’s flower barrels. Three half-wine barrels were holding up her leaning wooden fence. The barrels were sprouting sunflowers in every direction, and their heads were bowed under their own weight. Below the sunflowers, the barrels were bursting with mint, strawberries, gladiolas, and geraniums.
Shelley answered the side door in baggy boys’ boxers and a pink wife-beater. She gave me a sleepy hug and pulled me into the kitchen. There were dishes in the sink and a pot of greenish rice on the stove.
Hunter and Isabel were still sleeping in their rooms. Hunter’s room was plaid and blue with LEGOs in all states of assembly all over the floor. Isabel slept in a glass-enclosed sunroom, it was decorated with fairy lights and pink and purple paper, plastic, and glass fairies covered every visible surface.
The party was at Willits KOA, where the kids played in an Olympic-sized pool, with water guns at the old-west playground, and on the splash pad. I sat in the hot California sun, baking and sweating with the crisp, waiting for the party to end.
We didn’t know then that Hunter would only get two more mom-hosted birthday parties.
Shelley passed away in a car accident when he was 11. After she was gone, the kids got Safeway cake for birthdays and Redbox pies with Rediwhip at Thanksgiving. At Christmases, I made flan, coconut cream pie, and upside-down pineapple cake, all from recipes and all flavorless.
Finally, last summer, 20 years after my first strawberry crisp, I decided to try my own. Isabel sliced the strawberries and coated them with white sugar. I mixed a cup of dry oats, a half cup of cubed butter, and a half cup of packed brown sugar. We layered the strawberries and the oats mix in a glass baking dish and baked it for 45 minutes at 375.
While it baked, we froze a metal mixing bowl, then poured in heavy whipping cream. How hard can it be, I thought, beginning to froth the cream with my whisk.
Isabel and I stared at the cream; it frothed and got bubbly. After 3 minutes, my arm started to cramp, and I asked Isabel to take a turn. She whisked furiously, her brown hair falling into her eyes as she stared down at the bowl. We willed the cream to thicken and helped it with heaping spoons of powdered sugar. After more minutes of trading turns, the cream began to warm. It stayed frothy but didn’t form peaks.
After a few more minutes, I poured the bowl’s contents into my Kitchen Aid bowl and set the mixer on high. The peaks form within minutes. I spooned the cream on the warm crisp and handed Isabel a spoon; we dueled for the best bite.