Remember when you were growing up and your mom made a cake from scratch?  The best part of the whole process wasn't the cake or even the icing.  It was licking the bowl.
    
It's the simplest of pleasures sometimes that mean the most.
    
My sister and I used to take turns between licking the beaters and the bowl.  If one got the bowl, the other got the beaters.  The next time it switched.  Chocolate cakes, pound cakes, lemon cakes.  It didn't matter.  Any cake batter would do.
    
So when my mom made a cake this past Thanksgiving, she was excited to let my nephews lick the bowl.  They're four and six, that perfect age where the world is always right and licking sweet cake batter from a bowl is as good as it gets.

Joey, the youngest, was in the kitchen when Mom handed him the mixing bowl she'd just used to make a pumpkin cake.  "You wanna lick the bowl?" she asked.
    
The bowl was bigger than Joey's head and he held it with both of his tiny hands, looking up at my mom as if she'd spoken Greek.  (The boy's mother, my sister, is a chef and she later confessed that she always lets the boys lick the beaters.  So licking the bowl itself was a foreign concept.  It's my secret belief that she keeps the bowl for herself but she'll never admit to it.)
    
After Joey stared at my mom for a few seconds, confusion clouding his face, she taught him how to lick the bowl:  Run your finger along the inside of the bowl, gathering as much of the cake goo as you can hold, then lick your finger.  Repeat until clean.
    
Joey understood immediately.  In fact, he'd taken a few big swipes and sucked his finger clean before my mom told him to go share with his brother.  Joey's eyes lit up and he bounded off yelling Matty's name.  
    
Joey loves to share with Matty.  I give that habit two more years.
    
Mom followed behind a little while later, just to make sure Joey didn't find a nice quiet cubbyhole to get lost in.  He is four after all.
    
She found them in the playroom.  Joey was standing patiently awaiting his turn as Matty licked the bowl.  
    
Literally.
    
My mom stood in the doorway, hand covering her smile, and watched as Matty grasped the mixing bowl with both hands and lifted it to his face.  He bobbed his head up and down, in and out, as he "licked the bowl."
    
"Matty," Mom said, trying not to laugh out loud.
    
Matty raised his face and looked at my mom with his big brown eyes.  His nose and chin were spotted with cake batter.  There was some in his hair.  It was the Kodak moment of all time.
    
There's a certain innocence and joy in the smallest of activities, from snuggling under the covers on a cold winter night to eating a peanut butter and jelly sandwich with marshmallows to sucking in the fragrance of a thicket of honeysuckles.  And sometimes it takes a child's perspective to remind us that there's more than one way to lick the bowl of life.

(Originally run in the Tideland News Dec 3, 2008)

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