Many years ago, when I struck out on my own into the world, my Mom gave me her old ’70s-era, groovy Rival hand mixer as a donation to my new apartment.
I dutifully accepted the appliance, added it to my little stable of kitchen equipment, and used it for random side dishes of mashed potatoes, holiday cookies, or whatever else one makes with a handheld mixer. I never questioned it. It just did its thing.
And it did it well! Well enough, anyway, for any and all occasions when it was called into duty.
Over decades of changing cities, living quarters, situations, vegetarianism, boyfriends, small kitchens, big kitchens, low-carbing, and hosting holiday meals, that Rival mixer was at the heart of it all. Dependable, strong, capable, and always there when I needed it.
A true workhorse.
A few Christmases ago, however, it finally met its demise in a Christmas Cookie Day incident.
My sister and I were all-in on a festive day of baking and put that mixer to the test with a batch of Chocolate Crinkle cookies. The stiff, fudge-like dough proved to be too much for the now-middle-aged mixer. Mid-mix, it made a weird noise, shuddered to a halt, and gave one final, hard-earned groan…complete with a puff of smoke.
Shocked, I looked at my sister.
“Oh no…I think the mixer died!”
And we both just stood there staring at it, at a complete loss for words.
Somehow, we managed to finish the rest of the cookies that day, but the sense of loss stuck with me. I started wondering what kind of replacement I would find and whether anything new could possibly work as hard (or last as long) as that old Rival had.
Looking back through social media posts from years past, I discovered that the groovy little mixer had actually made several appearances over time, usually around Thanksgiving when it was really getting a workout.
There it was on the counter in one kitchen and then another, beating its way through giant bowls of Thanksgiving potatoes destined to be passed around the table.
I think I always liked the fact that it was a bit of a dinosaur. While everything else around it changed, the mixer didn’t. It was my little piece of history, still doing exactly what it had always done, adding a little extra love to those giant bowls of potatoes.
Remarkably, I even still had the original box.
There is something particularly hilarious about the photographic evidence of its eventual replacement: the ancient Rival, still sitting in its original box, beside an enormous, sleek, stainless-steel machine that looks capable of launching something into orbit.
I imagine the Rival looking over at it and saying: “I have served this family with distinction. Good luck, spaceship.”
The fancy-schmancy replacement has multiple attachments, considerably more horsepower, and does the job beautifully.
But it’s just not the same.
Sometimes we don’t realize we’ve become sentimental about an ordinary object until the day it stops working.
A mixer isn’t an heirloom. At least, it doesn’t seem like one when your mother hands you an old appliance for your first apartment.
But use it for thirty-plus years…through different homes and different versions of yourself, Thanksgiving potatoes and Christmas cookies, boyfriends and husbands, dietary phases and holiday traditions, and all the ordinary meals in between…and apparently it becomes one anyway.
The new mixer will probably serve me well for years. It has attachments and power and more speeds than anyone could reasonably need.
But it didn’t come from my Mom’s kitchen.
And it hasn’t lived my life with me long enough yet to merit any kind of affection. But welcome to the family anyway, spaceship.
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