Infuse the magical aura back into everyday life

Last weekend, I had an outrageous craving for breakfast food. It was 3 a.m. on a Saturday… Last weekend, I had an outrageous craving for breakfast food. It was 3 a.m. on a Saturday night/Sunday morning and a guy friend of mine and I drove around for about an hour until we finally landed in front of Oakland’s infamous McDonalds.

The line was surprisingly short, and to our delight they were serving pancakes. Now normally I am quick to be instrumental in any anti-fast food movements but it was late, and it was inconceivable to wait in the line that looped around at Eat ‘n Park.

You know that you’re craving something when you don’t even wait to get home to dig in to the food. In the passenger seat of my friend’s car, syrup and all, we commenced our meal.

I was suddenly disappointed at the contents that warmed the Styrofoam monogrammed with golden arches. Three silver-dollar pancakes, shriveled up, cold and practically inedible. Since we had already driven away by that time, I decided when we reached my apartment the radiation waves in my microwave would salvage my meal.

When I entered my kitchen, something interesting happened.

I was hit with nostalgia.

I was seven again in my grandmother’s kitchen on a Sunday morning. As I listened to the sound of her slippers hitting the back of her feet, the womanly patterns in her skirt swished around the kitchen. As she retrieved an armful of flour, nutmeg, pure vanilla extract and cinnamon, it was unquestionably breakfast time.

But not just any ordinary breakfast would do. It had to be the absolute favorite of my brother, my three sisters and myself: pancakes. Now my grandmother always mocked the individual batches of pancakes that belonged to television and Aunt Jemima boxes. Hers wasn’t pancakes; it was one giant pancake made in a frying pan.

The absolute wonder of it all wasn’t just in its delectable taste, but the point at which my grandmother would flip this oversized pancake over for all of us to see. For as long as I can remember this Sunday morning spectacle, my grandmother never missed the frying pan.

And as we all exclaimed for her as if we were standing in the bleachers at the pancake Olympics, pancakes become more than just a food. It was a magical pastime with an aura that could be conjured up years later in a college kitchen 1/3 it’s size.

When I think of the McDonalds pancakes that barely got the job done that early Sunday morning, it made me think of all the things that have been drained of their magic as a result of expeditious service. The most immediate example in my mind is technology and how it has completely changed the way we all communicate.

I think back to the love letters I wrote to middle school crushes sprayed with my mother’s perfume. Or the notes passed in class that would obligate a crushee to answer to a date or a committed relationship by checking a box yes or no. As silly and irrelevant to our college lives as these things may seem now, they both have a magical quality that makes me frown at the text messages, e-mails and AOL instant messages we send each day to loved ones and family members.

Instead of feeling closer to people because of the truth that anyone in my life is a text away, I feel even more distant with every new version of the Sidekick that comes out each year. There are just simply some things that our communication devices can’t communicate.

Think of all the moments that could possibly be relayed. Your baby sister at home has just lost a tooth, or the one you love is smiling at the very moment they’re offered a job they’ve wanted all summer. Or maybe your parents just received news that your older brother is engaged.

I don’t know what kind of personalities your family members have, but even if I was sent a pixilated picture from a camera phone, or a video with a voice memo capturing the sound of my brother’s laugh or his immediate facial expression, it wouldn’t do it any justice.

Now don’t get me wrong. I see it as a good thing that college requires us to be shipped out of our parents’ residences and away from most of our families physically. There’s no getting around being away from a lot of the people we love.

Furthermore, I’m more than eager to text a message during class than the next college student. And I’ll send an e-card to a faraway friend I know had a bad day. Technology has made a lot of things convenient that I’m thankful for, but I fear they’ve also made us a complacent society.

We are complacent enough to e-mail a thought to our loved one instead of handwriting them a letter that holds the scent of our perfume just because we wrote it. We must still be willing to do the work to show people how much we care so that the same magical aura my grandmother infuses into her homemade pancakes is infused into our everyday words, thoughts and actions.

Don’t even think about e-mailing Rose at sba1@pitt.edu. Stop by and see her in room 434 WPU to tell her what you thought about this column.