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D R A M A_ Q U E E N
- - - - - - - - - - T A B L E_ T A L K A mother-to-be asks: "How bad does it hurt?" Share the pain of labor, delivery, contractions and more in the Mothers area of Table Talk ___________________
R E C E N T L Y Marriage among the mullahs The devil in your family room The prisoner of Pennsylvania Avenue My Advent adventure Imaginary friend BROWSE THE SECOND THOUGHTS ARCHIVES - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Mamafesto
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My mother didn't bake. She thought about baking, planned on baking -- but she never got around to it, preferring to spend her little free time engrossed in a romance novel or goofing off. Except at Christmas. One day each year, my mother and I baked Christmas cookies together. We (or, more accurately, I) spent hours deciding what to bake. I would flip through "Betty Crocker's Picture Cookbook," the red- and-white ring binder with its tantalizing color photographs of perfect cookies laid out in seductive array. What to do -- the traditional recipes or something new? And we always decided on the traditional ones -- snickerdoodles, Toll House cookies made with M&Ms and candy canes. The snickerdoodles always split into satisfyingly chaotic fissures across the top. The M&M cookies always looked like little balls of rainbow. The candy canes were always a lot more trouble than we expected. Fourteen years ago, my friend Carol and I baked cookies together one day before Christmas. Carol is one of those physically competent women who never shirks an adventure or skips taking a risk. She camps alone, runs white water, climbs and hikes and practices criminal law. We met in college, living two doors apart in the dormitory, 25 years ago. We took a whole day, the two of us, in her old kitchen, splashing flour on the floor and eating so much dough we didn't care to eat lunch. We hadn't talked like that in a long time. At the end of a long, satisfying day, we split the spoils and said goodbye. We've baked cookies together every Christmas season since then. Our lives have drifted further apart; we live in different towns, have different friends. Some years, it's been the only time we see each other. But my mother died of breast cancer 11 years ago, and baking cookies matters to me. So each year, Carol drives into town in her muddy Jeep from her country place, hauls several bags and boxes into my kitchen and picks an apron. There's my mother's green Christmas apron and her orange-checked one that says "Home Sweet Home" in cross-stitch embroidery and the racy yellow one with lace on the edge. I always make something my mother made -- snickerdoodles or M&M cookies -- and Carol makes gooey Scotch teas and cream-cheese-filled dates. Carol talks about her Campfire Girls troop, the house she and her husband are building, her family, her work. I talk about my kids, trips I've taken, my church, my family, my work. At the end of the day, we take each other's picture, holding trays of seductively arrayed treats. Nine years ago, Carol's mother died from ovarian cancer. We spent the baking day that year talking of little else but family. We splashed flour on the floor, ate dough, washed dishes, cried a little, took photographs of each other with our spoils, divided them up and said a fond goodbye. Three years ago, Kathy joined us. Kathy was my freshman-year roommate in that same college dorm, 25 years ago. She lives nearby, but we don't see a lot of each other. She is a designer, involved in a different church, and our lives revolve in different circles, intersecting only now and then. Kathy is petite and looks little older than she did in college, until you get close enough to see the laugh lines. Three years ago, she found herself most unexpectedly divorced, just a few months from her mother's death from breast cancer. She was depressed, tired, struggling against her own loss of hope. She felt each year like weight. So the three of us baked together, and Kathy talked a lot -- about starting to date again, her spiritual study, her work. Mostly, we talked about our mothers. My old dog begged for scraps, my adolescent daughter perched on a stool awhile, spooning out dough and eating too much of it while she listened silently to our conversation. We took photographs of each other holding that year's decidedly mixed results, divided them up and said goodbye and Merry Christmas. Last year, Rebecca joined Carol and Kathy and me. Rebecca was one of the resident counselors in the same dormitory at college. She was just a year or two older, magically mature. She was a dancer then and is an Alexander technique teacher now, still beautiful and strong. She brings a scent of female strength into the room with her when she comes. Last year, her mother was dying of breast cancer, and Rebecca had been attending her day and night. She came for half the day, fragile and shaky, and baked gingersnaps the way her mother did. We all laughed a lot, and took pictures of each other, and before Rebecca had to hurry back to her mother's bedside, we divided up what we baked to share with our families on the holiday. Carol and I were the last ones done; we swept the floor. Yesterday, Carol and Kathy and Rebecca and I spent a long day baking together -- hours and hours. We made more kinds and just more cookies and bars and treats than we've ever made before. We filled my big kitchen -- I made M&M cookies and Rebecca made gingersnaps and Kathy made snickerdoodles and Carol made hazelnut balls rolled in powdered sugar. Every dish, spoon, bowl, spatula and measuring cup got dirty more than once; we washed dishes again and again. We ate bagels with cream cheese and slices of apple and crackers. The floor got slippery with flour and, when my daughter came home from school, she cruised around looking for snacks and stole bits of dough and fed bits to the dog. We talked about work, sex, politics, religion, old friends, ex-lovers and families. And our mothers. In the late afternoon, we painted our toenails. Then we painted the dog's toenails. We listened to Christmas carols, took turns plinking on the piano. There were long moments of contemplative silence, too, broken by requests for cinnamon and the ding of the oven timer. There were a few tears. "Whatever happened to clubs like the Elks and the Junior League?" asked Rebecca, apropos of not much.
"We're the club of daughters of deceased mothers!" announced Carol. And we
are. There are many things I don't tell them -- just because there's never
enough time, not enough hours to do so much catching up, keeping on. But I
don't know if there are things I couldn't tell them. We are in our early
40s and we've known each other since we were teenagers. And to our
everlasting surprise, we are all motherless daughters. That is a special kind
of membership. We took each other's pictures, floury aprons and sticky hands
and trays of treats. My hand strayed to my chest, my breast, as we talked.
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