“Uh, Mom?  How do you close an ironing board?”

This, from Jamie, age 12.

I remember how this action baffled me as a kid.  You press where?  And do what? Perhaps I was or still am challenged by the mechanics.  Or maybe no one showed me.  I remember my mother teaching me how to iron a shirt and how her grandmother taught her.  But how to close the unruly ironing board?  I was on my own.

What else am I overlooking?  What are the small actions we tend to forget?  This recipe comes by way of my grandmother who was a big part of my life and now sadly can’t remember much, let alone how to be gentle with scone dough so it doesn’t get tough.  But I can teach Jamie and he can tuck the bit of info away somewhere until he wants to bake for someone or wants to comfort himself as I did the year before I met my husband, baking bread in my dumpy ranch house in the woods.

“Bring the board here,” I tell Jamie and he lugs it out of the overstuffed pantry/laundry room.  “Press the little circle lever down while squeezing the ironing board.”

“Weird.”

“Yup,” I nod.  “Now come be gentle with the dough.”