Dreams realized

I stood at the kitchen counter, my hands covered in sausage, shredded cheese, and Bisquick, and thought of my mom.

My mom was a great cook. She made braised chicken wings and eggs scrambled with mushrooms and potatoes and a killer Mexican rice dish I crave to this day. My grade school friends asked for sleepovers at my house, not because I was a scintillating conversationalist, but because my mom taught them how to make personal pan pizzas out of biscuit dough and how to sift powdered sugar over a warm triple chocolate cake.

Unless she was whipping up my great-grandmother’s fudge, she avoided recipes. Her strategy consisted of a little more of a this, a bit more of that, keep stirring until it looks right.

Drove me nuts.

I like directions, maps, flowcharts, clear and unambiguous specifics for how to do the job well. (A few months ago, my friend Sunni gave me her recipe for stuffed shells. The last step says, “Bake in a moderate oven until done.” I nearly flipped my lid.)

My mom was okay with feeling her way, looking and smelling and tasting until she was happy with the results.

However.

She was not okay with her daughter underfoot while she cooked.

“Missy, scoot on out of here while I finish this up.”

“Missy, how about if you set the table?”

“Missy, go tell your dad and brothers dinner will be ready in ten minutes.”

“Missy, please go find something else to do.”

I was curious how to make heavenly things come out of the kitchen, but a teacher my mom was not. I was allowed to watch but not ask questions. Ripping up a salad was an acceptable chore, along with loading the dishwasher, but she was never going to trust me to stir flour into the gravy. In hindsight, I wish I’d gotten out my journal to take notes, but instead, I took her rebuffs to heart.

When she trusted me enough to operate an oven unsupervised, I took up bread baking. Making bread is no joke. It requires commitment, patience, and a willingness to make a huge mess. I wasn’t content to stick with quick breads, no ma’am. I headed straight into the land of cultured yeast and humid oven conditions.

And I was pretty good at it.

More to the point, my mom wasn’t. She had no advice or criticism, other than when she taste-tested my efforts. “Hah!,” I remember thinking. “I can make a good smell in the kitchen without her help.” I wasn’t being a brat, really. I was a girl in a house full of people who were good at things I was not, people with cooperative bodies and witty remarks. I was good at reading. And watching. And, eventually, bread-making. My specialty was a dark-crusted honey wheat, a nice accompaniment to Campbell’s vegetable soup.

But in the way of all things, I got bored with bread-making. I discovered a truth about myself that rises up in me with predictable regularity. Once I master something, I don’t want to do it anymore. I dislike this thing about me, this striving, striving, striving … and then, oh, yes, I made it, I arrived, I accept congratulations, and then I wake up one morning with a chronic case of the ho-hums.

This is getting tiring.

And so, with my hands sticky with sausage, cheddar cheese, and Bisquick, I thought about my mom. She wanted to put warm food in people’s bellies. She wanted her children to be safe, well-behaved voters with a strong social conscience. She wanted to run her hands over calico quilts and grandbabies’ bottoms. She wanted to eat her M&Ms in peace.

I imagine my mom sitting down with me to have hot tea and a cookie. “Mom?” I’d ask. “Did you get what you wanted?” She’d say yes, and she’d cry because tears were her first and last language. She’d say something like, “I’m so proud of you kids.” She’d try to grasp my hand or my arm, which I have always hated, but I would try to hold still, just for a moment or two, because, really, I can give her this small thing.

People come to my house now, and they know I’ll put warm food in their bellies. They sit in a chair shaped by my bottom, the one in full view of the bird feeder, and they say, “I could sit here forever.” They sleep in a bed with lavender-scented sheets and they run their fingers over my bookcases and they indulge my giant dog. I hope they ignore the spot on the wall where a meatball made a mark I haven’t bothered to paint over. There is no front walkway leading to my door, and no doorbell to press, and I worry.

I worry about first impressions and about whether I prefer to open the door or close it and about my cycles of striving and ceasing. I worry about the meatball mark on the wall and why I don’t just clean it up.

I worry that my mom died with more regrets than dreams realized.

But, really, what can I do? So I put the kettle on, and I make a slice of peanut butter toast, and I glance at the crossword puzzle. I fold clothes, and I think about words. I feed my people good things.

I read. I watch, ever on the lookout for the faintest spark of light, the one that says, “This way, this thing, this person, this moment. This prayer.”

I take deep breaths from a low place, the very lowest place, inside of me.

I head out with unclear directions. And I open the door to a house with no front walkway or doorbell, but a profusion, I hope, of warmth, aromas, and light.