My Mom The Genius

When I was about 4 or 5 years old and Christmas was peeking around the corner, my mom and I were making rice crispy treats... quite possibly my all time favorite yummy snack back in the day.

I remember her asking me "Should we make them green and red for Christmas?" My eyes lit up. I couldn't fathom how it would be possible to change the color of rice crispy treats! They were always yellowy-white. Of course, I was giddy at the possibility, and agreed readily.

Her next question nearly caused my heart to stop beating. "Should we cut them into triangles?" What? How? Rice crispy treats were thick yummy squares of goodness! How would you make them into triangles? Again, as I wracked my brain while we melted and poured and mixed I just couldn't figure out how it could come to be.

Then my mom did the amazing - she simply added food coloring - something I had no concept of as a wee person. After the treats had settled and were ready for cutting, she again blew my mind by cutting across the pan diagonally, and then kept cutting diagonally until we had a couple dozen triangles.

And just like that, she transformed regular old rice crispy treats into magical triangular Christmas-colored goodies.

My mom held me in complete awe with her magical powers - her depth of knowledge, her radical "out of the box" thinking. My mom's Christmas miracle elevated her to genius status in my mind.

Although there may have been moments while growing up (generally my teen years) when I was certain my mom was a few cards short of a deck, she has always hovered somewhere between magical and genius. I cherish her exceptional thoughtfulness, knowledge about things that matter to me (like food, and gardening, and power tools), wild creativity, and unbelievable resourcefulness. She has never ceased to amaze me with her wealth of natural skills and abilities.