I have a confession. I’ve never made pancakes. The truth is, I’m not one for recipes or lots of rules or even following detailed instructions. My own cooking is more like inventing. My oven resembles a glorified “Easy Bake” oven and when I boil water on my stove, every window in my apartment fogs up. I’m also uncoordinated. The mere thought of having to flip batter over with a spatula on a hot griddle makes my palms clammy. There are a number of things in my life that I am very good at. There are also a large number of seemingly simple things that have caused me to land in the emergency room. Does it make me less of a woman, if flipping pancakes makes me nervous? My Great, Great, Great Grandmother, Virinda Longmire, might answer yes.
Virinda and her husband, James are quite famous in my family tree. They met and married in Indiana during the mid 1800’s. Together, they led a wagon train to the foot of Mt Rainer, in Washington. James built the first wagon road around Mt. Rainer and together they established the Longmire Hot Springs Hotel and Resort. More than a 150 years later, I’m told that people traveled many miles on foot, horseback, and wagon for her excellent pancakes. I’m guessing this was the only restaurant for miles around. Her picture captures her, sturdy and efficient in her calico apron. She looks like she needs a manicure and volumizing conditioner. She looks like she’s had eleven children.
James and their sons built the hotel. Virinda did the cooking. A tourist website advertises a “settler’s re-enactment” every August where a group of locals dress up like James and Virinda and act out what life must have been like all those years ago. Nearby, her gravestone stands as sturdy as her picture. It reads, “Charitable Neighbor, Devout Christian, Loving Mother, Capable Wife.”
I can’t help but be offended by the word “capable.” Is that really what all her work adds up to? Excellent pancakes, eleven children, living out of a wagon with the very real risk of wild animals, inclement weather and thieves, establishing a town where there once was only wilderness and she gets the word, ‘capable’ carved in stone? James has eleven lines describing his accomplishments. He was a naturalist, humanitarian, explorer, and peacekeeper. He was a lieutenant in the war with the Indians and held a seat in the state legislature. I understand that they lived in a different time. When I Google her name, I only find that she stood beside James, made great pancakes and named a nearby valley, “Paradise” because she thought the wild flowers were heavenly. Virinda’s son, Leonard Longmire, remembers, “When she first saw the valley with its thick carpet of wild flowers everywhere, Mother said, ‘this must be paradise.’”
I had always hoped that I descended from graceful, gorgeous women. Is that wrong? Honestly, I will never be responsible for exploring an as yet uncharted piece of earth from the business end of a team of oxen but whenever I am faced with risk or change or danger and on the days I fear that I am not capable enough, I begin to wonder if my life might be different if I actually learned the art of perfect pancakes. Maybe it’s less about pancakes and more about allowing my first attempt at anything to be less than I had hoped, knowing full well, the bowl is full of batter and there is still so much I have yet to learn.
“The first pancake is always spoiled, ruined, a failure, thrown out, no good.” As an oldest child, I have always hated this phrase. It’s hard not to take that kind of thing seriously. Am I considered the “first pancake” in this scenario? Why must the first one be terrible? And why has it been translated into every language and posted on ‘Google’ for the whole wide world to read about? I am finding that there’s a lot written about pancakes. People are very serious about their breakfast. For example, Fat Tuesday or Mardi Gras is also known as Pancake Tuesday. Apparently, it’s been this way for thousands of years because; pancakes are the most efficient way of using up all the fat in the house before the beginning of Lent. Pancake Tuesday sounds delicious and highly logical. Although, the lesser-known Pancake Tuesday tradition is to give the first pancake to the woman in the room with the most questionable virtues. Why are men conveniently excluded from this?
