12.20.2011

the kitchen

Dear Mom,

In the middle of making pork chops right now ... I miss you more than ever. I never thought being able to pick up the phone to ask you if I should cook the potatoes first would someday be an impossible dream. Potato questions. So simple and now so un-askable.

I’m now the only Double X in the house and so am outnumbered three to one. Five to one if you count the dogs. The (human) boys, who miss you as much as I do, are unbearably bossy – can you believe it – in the kitchen. Dad wants to make sure everything is done just so; Scott and Matthew want to make sure I don’t ruin yet another dinner (and, subsequently, a week’s worth of lunches). The dogs, thank God, will eat anything I drop on the floor. Due to my inability to cook without spilling, they are well-fed long before their kibble is served.

I don’t know how you did all these everyday things. I don’t know how you sautéed the onions in a hurry without them jumping out of the pan. I don’t know how you resisted the urge to keep opening the oven door to watch the mushroom soup bubble over the sides of the baking dish. I don’t know how you established such a sure presence in your kitchen that no one hovered over you, cleaned up after you, or shook their heads and sighed as they retreated to other rooms. I couldn’t even get them to retreat until I murmured something about the onset of PMS – the wild card whose power I’m counting on to ensure that everyone eats without complaint (or “constructive criticism for next time”) even if the potatoes crunch between their teeth. Golden silence is all I can ask for – the hope for a compliment is something like the hope of ringing your cell to ask you about baking times.

Mom, I miss you. I miss the most ordinary things that I can never get back. Thank you for leaving a birthday voicemail for me this past July. I wish I could listen to it without crying, I miss your voice so much. I miss your pork chops. I wish I could be a mom like you, although the reality is that I might never be a mom at all. The only person who could understand what that means to me – now I can only guess at what you would say to comfort me.

I miss your voice.

I miss you.

I love you.

And I wonder if the potatoes are done.

1 comment:

m. said...

Oh, (((((((hugs))))))), hugs, hugs, and more hugs. So honest and beautifully written.

Thinking of you and your family.

xxxxx