So this is what happened on Sunday morning: I was excited! Though the day was gray and the weather not conducive to the great outdoors, my new Cuisinart arrived the day before and I decided that I would try to “make something,” If you recall, my machine, purchased with Robert, one Spring day in 1981, from Zabar’s and taken home on the subway, decided to bite the bread crumb. Though the iron workhorse of a 40-year old motor was still fine, it was the no-longer-made plastic parts that the blades were attached to, the stems, that just broke apart, leaving me in the lurch while I was trying to reconstruct a vegetarian dish from the 1970s. This was a few months ago and would believe, (of course you would, in these days of Covid you would believe anything, right!?) there was actually a waiting list on every site I could find for a new machine. A three months wait. All of a sudden the world had become so domestic that there was a run on Cuisinarts instead of take-out menus. People were home and cooking; somehow that makes us feel that we are creative, independent, and that we know what to do with ourselves during dark, cold pandemic months.

I researched for weeks, just recently. I went back and forth between the Cuisinart 13-cup model (I used to have an 8-cup) and then, when my head was turned, I began to explore the Breville, which, though much more money, seem to be a better machine. But now there is a waiting list for the Breville.

And, though I didn’t want to buy from Amazon, no other site had the model I wanted: I was trapped between ethics and wanting to bake.

Bake won.

There I was on a Sunday, after breakfast, going through 40+-year old cook books and the books, three of them, that came with the original machine. The original had James Beard smiling on the front of a well-constructed spiral book with a cover and pages built to last. The one book that came with the new machine was a paltry imitation, contained the set-up of the parts and thin pages of recipes, which when flipped over, doubled as its Spanish- language counterpart. In short, it was the updated version and an omen for cost-cutting.

But I still had faith, and as I separated eggs, measured flour and cut up bananas, I referred to the proper pages to learn the parts of the new machine which was complicated and confusing. For days I watched Cuisinart videos: demos by their sales and marketing department lady who disfluently went on and on about each part but only demonstrated the making of salad dressing. (Hold those anchovies, please).

So, where was I? I was caught up in the excitement of the new toy, the inclusion of a dicing attachment, a new, unblemished machine, how I was about to put all the ingredients together and come up with batter! I lined up little dishes with salt, baking powder, baking soda. There was a bowl of sugar. It was coming back to me, the joy that I had abandoned years ago.

So I followed the steps in the book and it was time to remove the lid. All the processes, despite my binge-watching the demo-lady, were new and foreign. The machine I had previously had a few parts, and now that I think about it, the machine was never all that simple to use: the “lexan” work bowl and lid never glided on and off, it was a pain to position the bowl on the machine itself, the parts never really cooperated. Now, it appeared that a lot of thought went into this new design. The motor was so much lighter! (it’s called a cheapening of parts in my book) and the feel of the bowl and its lid was more like plastic, less hefty for sure.

What are we up to? It’s time to remove the lid. I had made the batter and the need to pour into the pan was upon me. So, I turned the lid counterclockwise, pulled it off and with that movement the entire multi-shoot housing went sailing to the floor: The smallest of the plungers did a double bounce and its locking collar broke off, right where it said “Made in China.”

I was in a state of Sunday-morning-baking-disbelief. A brand new machine. Like a brand new car you want to remain pristine for the rest of its life and you take it out of the garage to go for a ride on its maiden run and some schmuck backs into you.

What happens when this happens? You take a good half hour and stare in disbelief. You pull out the Crazy Glue and decide to make amends. You crawl on the floor for another half hour looking for the pieces that bounced away into the hinterlands with the lost passports you’ve been searching for. You feel like you’ve made a mistake buying this guy and not waiting for The Breville. You want it fixed and you want it fixed NOW! You want to learn how to rewind time and apply your 20-20 brilliance, thus you want to compete with God for the job.

It’s Sunday. I am sitting looking through the paltry instruction book and I see that customer service is open on Sunday! Do I call? Should I be embarrassed that this happened and make up a story that all of this wasn’t my fault? Should I say that my three year old grandchild (a big lie), got on a chair and reached for the machine and went flying with the lid? What do I do on the gray Sunday that began with so much excitement; just let it go? Forget about it?

NO! I am calling customer support! And I did. And I waited and waited and waited and then…

A very young voice answered the phone. Andrea. And like all phone reps be they from tech support, the bank, customer service, I seem to get into a conversation. I asked her how she was. I began blathering. She began expounding, and all of a sudden we were part of the universal connection via a cheap plastic part. I could see she was suffering, a twenty-year old doing customer service. A girl from Honduras born here, with a bi-racial two-year old, living in, and disliking Florida, wanting to move to NYC-or at least Atlanta, wanting a better life. I became the mother, the teacher, the mentor, the interested party, brought to the younger version of myself to offer a few kind words. The broken plastic was a tool for mending. I didn’t have to think about a recently lost mother, a husband in decline in a nursing home. We were both somehow broken and trying to heal our hearts with the craziest of glues, but just like the “pusher” in the lid for the smallest of ingredients, there are parts missing, that even if I had glued one shard back, there was another no where to be found on the wood floor, or otherwise, and the collar of that piece, all made in China, would remain jagged: The only way to fix it was to replace it. Andrea was going to send me another one, no questions asked, to “get me back to baking.”

“Andrea,” I said, after her true confessions and self-revelations and berations, when you can you will move, but for now, the most important thing is to finish school. (We had a long conversation about Central America and the state of the countries and political affairs here.) I told her I was proud of her and her independent heart and determination, and doing customer service was a very positive thing, she had a job and was on her way. Her youthful heart thanked me.

She said her supervisor was signalling for her to wrap up the call. I thanked her for her help. I wished her a good day, I reminded her to be strong and positive, I wished her the best.

I said I was proud of her and that I loved her.

The call was ended.

And then my phone went bing!