Scrambled Eggs

It’s the long-anticipated end-of-year class trip to Magic Mountain Amusement Park today. There are going to be towering, rumbling, inverting, stomach-lurching rollercoasters. The sun will be scorching in Valencia; hours of romping with eighteen other energetic, click-y, fragrant, reckless emerging adolescents. We will have our pick of the best pastel cotton candy, Dr. Pepper, Twizzlers, french fries, and Skittles that LA County has to offer.

Even though she is not this kind of adventure seeker, my mom understands what is in store for me. She may not be able to avoid over-drafting her bank account or the carbon copied eviction notices stuck to the door, but she sure as day knows what a person needs in this kind of situation: a good, solid breakfast, one that “sticks to your ribs”, maintains your energy throughout the day ahead, doesn’t easily hurl up and out to splatter on those below.

This day calls for eggs. And not just any eggs. Scrambled eggs.

I suspect she takes the extra minutes to scramble the eggs — even though she is in a perpetual chaotic and confused rush — so she can sneak in the whole milk for that dose of calcium and bonus protein.

Even at fourteen, I feel her love and care in this fork to bowl whisk-whisk gift.

A fried egg is expedient.

Liquid gold runs fast and gets lost as it spreads across the plate. Or over too high heat, the yoke denatures to throat clogging paste.

But a slow cooked scrambled egg is nurturing, protective, generous, motherly.

One day some local rapscallions may appreciate why I shove scrambled eggs down their gullets before their big days. Or, maybe not. 

But this morning, listening to the resident adolescents whine that “the breakfast bar is good enough!” I feel my mom nodding with approval as I take those precious extra minutes today to breathe and to scramble.