Baking on a Saturday

After a sleepless Friday night worrying about how I would juggle writing a conference paper with prepping and grading for my composition and poetry classes, I knew what I had to do on Saturday. 

I pulled out the old, steel mixing bowl and my favorite wooden spoon. I measured flour and whisked egg whites and rinsed raspberries. Soon my fingers smelled of lemon zest, and the kitchen of vanilla and warmth. 

Later, my shoulders relaxed in the September sunshine as Marilyn and I bit into muffins and listened to the ruckus of the birds in the trees. 

When I came in to wash the bowls and measuring cups, I knew I'd sleep well that night. 

Grounding

           The landscape changing before my eyes—that is what I had hoped to see this summer on our twelve-day road trip through Missouri, Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona, ending at the Grand Canyon.  On the way back, we were considering stops in Colorado and Kansas.  Thirty-six hours before we were to leave, our clothes were packed—unusually early—and most of our hotel reservations were made.  Then the phone rang, and the landscape of our summer and of our lives changed.  Marilyn’s brother Mo was missing.  Twelve days later, we found out that he had died by suicide in the woods not far from his home. 

            I know I have written about this before.  Those twelve days and the news we received at the end of them were so strange, so unexpected, so devastating that I expect I will write about them again and again, if only to try to make them more real. 

            Even as we cope with Mo’s death, we are figuring out how to ground ourselves in our lives, how to go on. 

            All through June, we made hour-and-a-half-long trips back and forth across the flatland on Route 72 to meet with detectives, to search for Mo, to plan the funeral, and then to attend the funeral.  The landscape did not change, but the skies did.   

            At the end of June, we drove west on 72 one more time, this time to celebrate Marilyn’s aunt Dorothy’s 90^th birthday; the invitation had come before Mo had ever gone missing.  We weren’t sure how we would do at a birthday celebration.  But seeing cousins and siblings again sounded comforting.  On the way there, we drove through a rainstorm—and then drove out of it, as is so common here in Central Illinois.  As I looked at the sky, ominously grey in the east and showing blue in the west, I realized I was once again seeking a metaphor for our grief. 

            The flatland grounds me. 

So does our newly remodeled kitchen.  Recently, I labeled jars and organized spices on the shelves of the narrow cabinet to the left of the stove.  I was proud of myself for tossing out spices that were old, for letting go.  And I found satisfaction in organizing what was left so that it would be easy to use.  I did all this on our new, bright white countertop. 

            This week, our nephews, ten-year-old twins, are visiting us.  This visit was also planned before Mo’s disappearance.  The countertop is now a place to experiment with the slime the twins bought at the dollar store last summer, when they were also here for Aunty Camp.  Boxes of sparklers and the twins’ novels and math exercises cover the kitchen table.  Occasionally, the boys break into the theme song for Gilligan’s Island, the 1960s TV show their “Aunty Mellon” introduced them to and which they now love.  Cutting up a peach for Sanjay and combing Sameer’s hair after his shower ground me.  I hear Marilyn giggling with them and am grateful for this reminder that life goes on, that we will all go on. 

 

The twins read every night.  They sleep on the floor at the foot of our bed.

The boys each have a cow they chose at the bookstore at Cedar Crest College, where they met me when I went out east for my 25th reunion.  The cows traveled to the Midwest with them and have had many adventures.  In a rare, quiet moment, Spotty here was reading A Midsummer Night's Dream.  The children's capacity for play and delight has been a comfort to Marilyn and me.

Comforts of Cooking

This morning, I made blueberry and apple pancakes and then was able to wash the dishes in the kitchen sink--the first time after the kitchen remodel. On tough days, making pancakes grounds me, and making them for Marilyn helps me feel even better. We still have no word of Marilyn's brother, Mo, who has been missing for more than two weeks. I expect I'll be making pancakes often.

What Love Looks Like

When my mother comes to stay, she always wants to cook for us. 

“What do you want me to make?  Tell me.  I want to make you eat,” she says almost every day.  My father does not cook, but when we go to Connecticut, where my parents live with my brother’s family, we find he has stocked the fridge with the yogurt we prefer.  My brother picks up bagels and cream cheese for our breakfast.  These are some of the ways they show their love.

I thought of this recently.  As Marilyn and I prepared to go away to Chicago for the long MLK weekend, she went to the bakery to get us some breakfast treats to enjoy in the hotel room.  As we were loading up the car that evening, Marilyn asked, “Did you see the muffin I got you?”  Happy anticipation filled her voice.  The muffin was beautiful; a slice of golden apricot sat atop dark grain filled with berries.  Holding the treat and seeing Marilyn’s smile, I felt loved.

That evening, we called my parents from the hotel room to see how they were; both of them had the respiratory flu and had slept all afternoon.  Their hoarse voices filled with warmth and appreciation as they described the cups of tea and the biscuits that Christal, my sister-in-law, had left for them before she took the twins to hockey practice. 

The muffin on our hotel room windowsill.

“She even brought up the dry bhel we like with tea,” my father marveled, mentioning the savory puffed rice snack he relishes. 

My mother added, “We got two very loving girls.  Really.  They take such good care of us.”  She was referring to Christal and Marilyn, their daughters-in-law, who also show love through food.

Michigan Avenue at night from our hotel room window.

The view from the Field Museum cafe, where Marilyn and I shared a cream cheese brownie and a coffee.

Pockets of Rest

After a writing retreat with NatalieGoldberg in 2010 in Taos, New Mexico, I was moved to create a writing practice group.  We meet on Tuesday evenings twice a month, sip on tea, laugh a lot, and write in ten-minute blocks in response to prompts we create.  When the timer goes off, we stop writing and read out loud to each other.  I wrote the piece below during a session with my group in response to the prompt “pockets.”

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Pockets are resting places—for our hands, for our keys, for the ticket stub not to be parted with just yet. 

Pockets are openings that hold.  Sometimes they can hold us.

Pockets of time.  Is that even an expression?  I wish to inhabit a pocket of time. 

It would be soft and worn, a pocket in an old apron.  The fabric would be a faded calico, the apron worn by a woman like me, only taller, bigger, older—my solid, calm alter ego.  She would be stirring a large pot of spaghetti sauce on the stove, her grey hair pulled back out of the way, some of it curling around her face in the steam from the pot. 

Her pocket would be a resting place, a place to be invisible and quiet.  A place to pause.  I need to create such a pocket of quiet contemplation and rest. 

Somehow, doing laundry last weekend was a kind of rest: being able to wash a whole load of towels without checking whether it was sunny out because we once again have the luxury of the dryer, the steady, rotating thump and hum.

On Sunday evenings, when I shower and get into my pajamas and then come downstairs to the aroma of dinner, then the living room feels like a pocket, a cocoon away from it all. 

These pockets of time allow me to be in touch with the solid, no-nonsense part of me, the one that knows it is all okay.  That I’m doing my best, that in this moment, I am always okay.