Blueberry Buckle

3/4 cup sugar. 1/4 cup oil or shortening. 1 egg. Mix thoroughly

I line up the ingredients on the kitchen island. It is quiet, my children and husband at a birthday party. The air is hot and sticky, too sticky for turning on the oven, but we have fresh blueberries and I want to make my grandma’s blueberry buckle.

Then stir in: 1/2 cup milk

My children picked the blueberries at my parents’ house. We visited for two weeks while my children took swimming lessons at the town pool where I learned how to swim. After lessons they used what they learned in my parents’ pool, going beyond the required floats—touching the bottom in the deep end and diving off of the diving board. The blueberry bushes were just outside of the pool area, the barn that had always overlooked the backyard just beyond.

2 cups flour

The first week our visit was rainy and by the second week the bushes ripened, the berries a deep blue, plump and ready to be picked. My children quickly filled their own bowls with blueberries. I helped, popping the occasional berry into my mouth. My son claimed to not like blueberries, but I saw him eating them every so often.

2 tsp. baking powder

Flour dusts the kitchen island, the floor, and my shirt. I always manage to get it everywhere when I’m baking. I mix the dry and then wet ingredients together, stirring the blueberries in at the end. We brought home exactly two cups.

1/2 tsp. salt

I think of my grandma, gone for sixteen years now. She went to Cornell for home economics and wrote her own recipes. Multiple sclerosis ensured that we never made any of them together, but I have them written down. I exclusively use her pie crust and today she is with me as I make her blueberry buckle. I hope to try it with different fruit this year too.

2 cups blueberries (or any fruit)

My mom and I went for a walk one evening. The light was soft as we walked around my old neighborhood. There were roses and milkweed on the end of the street where two of my best friends used to live. We walked toward the river and then looped back around, the daylight decreasing with every step. On the way home, we ran into my mom’s friend and her daughter, a woman who used to babysit me. We talked until the sky was completely dark. I saw a bat flit across the sky and mosquitoes chewed on my legs.

Make topping: 1/2 cup of sugar, 1/2 tsp. cinnamon, 1/3 cup flour, 1/4 cup oil or butter (1/2 stick)

When we returned, my son was breathless with excitement. He had decided to pick a blueberry on his own but when he went back to the bushes something climbed into the nearest one. He screamed and ran away.

Use an 8 or 9 inch square pan. Grease it—or spray it with Pam.

It was a baby raccoon. There were two in the first blueberry bush. My dad got a flashlight and we all walked back to the bushes. In the light we could see their tiny faces and distinct markings. By morning they were gone.

Pour cake batter in. Then sprinkle topping over it.

It was strange being home for so long; the longest stretch since I had moved out after college. So many things felt like home: my childhood house, the hills, the barn, the neighborhood pool, the walk to swimming lessons which was my walk to school every day. But so much also wasn’t home. The house is different now, my childhood room painted with a new bed. The hill that I used to stare at out my window is no longer visible, the neighbors’ trees now tall enough to block it. Gone are my childhood pets and the front of the house is now an open floor plan instead of two rooms. Downtown there are new business: a brewery, coffee shop, florist, book store, bed and breakfast. But mostly I am the one who has changed. 

Bake at 350 for 45-50 min.

I put the buckle in the oven. I need to repack the suitcases because we are leaving again later today—first to my in laws’ lake house and then tomorrow to Indiana to visit my husband’s grandma. This is summer. This is why I left my job—to spend weeks away from home when needed, to better watch my children grow and change, to reconnect with family, to push through my anxieties—to truly live. Tomorrow, we will leave to see a grandma who has become a part of my own life and I will eat the blueberry buckle from a woman who although gone, has never really left.