Hi Mom

The timer is beeping for a cake I have already taken from the oven. I knew it was done because the smell shifted ever so slightly; from sweet to a hint of acridity. I forgot to turn off the timer and so had to leave my computer to press the button, beeping annoyingly, even though the cake was long pulled, resting on the countertop, cooling. The beep feels random and intrusive. The cake is already out! The time has already past! I have settled down to write and must get up again! The interruption irritates me. My nose is sharper than the recipe. I know to trust my nose, but use the timer every time, as if the marriage of science and art will protect me and my creations. I could defer to a set recipe time alone, but that would miss the point, cakes are about flavor, and although there is a science to baking, it is really an art. Each cake I bake is slightly different, even though I follow the same worn 3X5 card recipes I have for years. We discuss the differences like oenophiles ruminating over wine, “This one is (softer, sweeter, richer, spicier) than the last.” So it is with stories, they change with each telling, adding a little bit of this or that as suits the moment, the ingredients are all available, but the combination shifts on mood, care, attention, and how well I stocked the larder.

My mother is a story teller. I have heard her stories over and over, I have incorporated her words into my own, she appears throughout my writing. I co-opt her. For me it is an expression of love, but I worry that if she were to read what I write about her she would be dismayed, that she can be rendered ugly, or targeted cruelly, or simply used as a device for my own literary pursuits. I am afraid that when I write about love, the fear or pain that cloaks the deeper message will obscure it and she will miss the point. I love my mother. But I fear telling her the truth or including her in the fullness of my life. Even though I am older now, and she is older still. Even though she probably knows everything I am afraid to tell her. We are stuck she and I in an adolescent pattern, I insisting to be fully understood, she just trying to love me. Some days, on the phone, over long distances I feel my impatience with her roil in my stomach. Even as I love every moment we spend together, even as I fear living on this planet without her. I hate myself for my arrested development. I feel the shame of acting fifteen when I am nearly fifty. I hate her in these moments for her unabashed love. But I know her deeply too; she is perplexed by my anger and my distance, still there after all these years, waiting to pounce and accuse her of imperfectly meeting my needs. I am a mother now too, and I understand her better than I did when I was a child. I love in a similar pattern, deeply, despite obnoxious behaviors, despite the need to individuate, despite your wisdom and their arrogance. For in the end the bond we share of flesh and memories, of nine months co-joined, of Thanksgivings and Chanukah and all those High Holiday services, of her pulling me from the ocean at five, and me returning the favor to her at seventy, is the deepest love of my life.