My mom was famous for getting up super early, especially on holidays to get started on the cooking. She was up at 5am putting turkeys in and making pies and I’m like her that way. I get up early too and today I’m up early at her house working in her kitchen to make my dad the pumpkin pie and lemon cake he asked for for his birthday.
So here I am in pre-dawn hours in my mom’s kitchen searching through drawers and cupboards for the measuring cups and spatulas, the pie pans and bundt pans all by myself while Dad stays sleeping.
I don’t have many memories of really using this kitchen beyond the dinners I’ve made for mom and dad while visiting over the years or looking for a smaller plate upon which to cut up hot dogs for whichever grandkid was still in finger food land at the time. I don’t think I can recall baking anything here like I am this morning before the sun comes up as the rain falls down.
And so, in the silence, I find myself talking to her while I’m searching, “Mom, do you have another measuring cup somewhere? Where did you get these measuring spoons? They are adorable but really hard to read the measure amount inside all those decorative hearts and flowers and shit.”
And, because it’s my mom, I naturally go to flabbergasted soon after, “What the heck, Mom? Why am I finding a second bundt pan in a completely different place than all the other baking pans? And you coulda told me you had a glass pie pan randomly over here before I went out and bought one and who in the world hangs on this old tin pie pan you’ve been using since before I was born? Seriously? Time to upgrade, Mom.”
It’s all just where she left it pretty much. And I’m talking to her like she’s here, but she hasn’t been this kitchen’s master in some time and she hasn’t slept here in this house in over a year.
Truth be told she never was one for cooking. She had other things to do and bigger fish to fry. She saved all her best tricks for Thanksgiving and Christmas and the occasional birthday meal us kids would special order, but other than that, this kitchen, for her, was ‘meh.’
For me, just now, it is full of clues and reminders. She held on to the last standing fragments of her wedding china on the top shelf of the cupboard to the left of the fridge and it’s still there as always. She kept a collection of teaspoons mostly from the Netherlands, first in an ornate tin that looked like something Vermeer had on hand, and then later put them all in a plastic bag. Her mixing bowl game is strong, her cooking pans and pots are an after thought. Like me, her linen game is strong. Like me, her kitchen tool arsenal is weak and don’t get me started on the knives….
She cares more about coffee cups than stemware, and doesn’t notice the years that have aged almost everything I recognize was here when I was eight. Why, Mom? Why did you give all that real estate beneath the stove to a fudging waffle iron that hasn’t seen daylight since the 90s? Why Mom? Why are there three separate drawers all of which seem to lack the most essential things, but you’ve got a whole cupboard full of old table decorations and tea candles Miss Havisham would really love to dig into to keep that old sad party going?
See? I go straight to criticism even in my mind, even as I do find what I need to bake something nice for Dad on the occasion of his 79th birthday. See? I’m playing one of the easiest and most dangerous cards to play in this game called Life and it’s the one that always reeks of ‘not good enough.’ Let me tell you what’s been ripped apart and left for dead by human hearts committed to proving themselves superior and set apart. So much. So much of the harm I cause is to point out the fault in others and remind myself I’m a cut above. And when it comes to my mom? I have a great list full of her foibles and faults I’ve perfected and exacted for the perfect moment in court. But for some reason, the trial never starts and I’m never the hero who gets to uncover the human to the gasps of the jury and the outrage of all. Instead I get older and the list just looks boring and I can see here in this kitchen she and I are the same. The same kinda imperfect just the measurements vary and the same kinda of hoping it’ll all be just fine and the same kinda willing to get up and start baking the same kinda woman sensing the passage of time.
I am talking to myself and talking to my mom while I’m waiting for the timer to go off half grateful for the quiet communion between me and my mom in this kitchen she left just so I could walk into it one morning and find her here among the baking sheets and lemon zest, the oven light and cooking spray. It’s all just how it’s supposed to be and so am I and so is she and here we are. I venture to guess the last person to ever make a pie here was my mother. And one day someone will say the very same thing about me.
Hey Mom, I know Dad would infinitely prefer you baked these pies for him today. I know he wishes he could wake to find you up early rinsing bowls and loading dishes, but since that’s not possible, I decided to do it for him myself and try it and do it in a way that we bring you right here to us with this. I’m a shadow of a substitute, but it’s all we’ve got. There are questions I have around what’s here and what’s not here. I have no idea if the lower oven works so I just didn’t even try. I was sure you had a set of small ramekins at one time but I couldn’t find them. Why you saved rotisserie chicken containers is beyond me, but I love you and I miss you. Love, Hope