Love, Loss & What We Baked / Love, Loss & What We Baked

It all started with this group of amazing women. We all came together through a book proposal writing course comprised of roughly 30 people, and eight of us became fast friends and confidants. We met via the internet twice a month and encouraged each other to continue on our creative paths. Diana has an interactive book in the works called, “Mole Mama”. It is about the journey of losing her mother and the love of her mother’s food. It is a recipe and support book for the bereaved. Diana shared that she has never been able to get her mother’s tortillas exactly right. I can relate, as I’ve kept two crates of my Mother’s recipes from the days she had a restaurant, and many of them I can’t get quite right. These recipes serve 100 people and I’ll never get that recipe right for, oh, say 10 people, but I still can’t bear to part with them. My mother used to love that song with the lyrics, “Someone left the cake out in the rain and I’ll never have that recipe again”…

I love Diana, and I love that she understands my heartache about the loss of my mother and I love that she honors her Mother and remembers her through the joy of food the same as I do. In another life, Diana and I would have been neighbors or our kids would have gone to the same school. But in this one, we have never met in person. We live thousands of miles apart, but it is as if we were only in the next room from each other. She called me the night before my debut as a guest on a radio show and she left a message saying, “I know you are going to do just great!” She has no idea how much that support meant to me, but I do know a new soul connection at this time in my life is rare and precious and I’m lucky enough to have more than just one.

This month’s project for our group, which we named, “Where the Magic Happens”, is to support Diana and “Mole Mama”. She did a live cooking presentation for the seven of us via the internet in a skype-like chat room. On her counter were a bunch of Gerber daisies, one of my favorite flowers. While Diana was busy mixing the batter, I inquired if that is her favorite flower, as they are mine. I stated that they reminded me of Minnie Mouse and later she mentioned how much her dearly departed mother loved Disneyland, and I told her maybe that was her mother speaking through me. I’m pretty positive it was as I could feel Diana’s mother beaming with pride as she showed us her grandmother’s Molcajete. We have serendipitous things happening like this all the time. Our “homework” this week is to make a recipe that we’ve eaten often, that was made by someone that loved you, and to make it for someone you’ve never made it for before. We are supposed to write down the amount of times we have had this recipe made for us throughout our lifetimes.

I chose my mother’s lemon bread.

The last time I made lemon bread was a year ago visiting my Aunt Adelaide with my sister. My aunt was nearing the end of her life and we went on a little adventure, that as it turns out, was really a journey to say goodbye. And we made lemon bread. It was a bittersweet experience, just like eating this particular lemon bread – sweet and juicy with a tart kick. Adelaide insisted the lemon bread recipe came from her, and my mom insisted it was her very own. Truth be told, it is a combination of the very best part of both of them, because they both made this recipe with love for the ones they loved. So when I got to Asheville, NC, what did I do? I baked in Adelaide’s kitchen, with my sister Cami, like my mother would do, because it is a way to show our love.

As soon as I take a bite I am thrown back into the Greenwich Village of my youth and I am running down the tree lined, cobblestoned streets and the brownstones, passing Mrs. Reardon, who was always sweeping her stoop and waving her hands with the broom in the air and yelling at the neighborhood kids passing by. “Keep off the stairs, mind ya!”, she said in her Irish accent. I am instantly teleported back to my mother’s restaurant, The Front Porch, which was in Greenwich Village, around the corner from our apartment. It used to be a pharmacy and had the old large glass jars with labels that no one gave any value to except that there was instant décor, and so they remained on the shelves as you sat and dined in this tiny corner restaurant. As soon as I opened the door, it smelled amazing and familiar and I felt safe and protected from the busy city life outside. I was a latchkey kid, and I grew up on The Front Porch food. After school I would drive the waitresses crazy being bossy and demanding, and usually eating whatever they decided to bring me at a table – lemon bread, vegetarian chili, and hot cider with a cinnamon stick. They put up with me only because I was the owner’s kid!

I am swept away to a later time in the loft on the 7th floor at our apartment on 15th street, where for Thanksgiving we would have nearly 60 people, friends and family, each bringing their own tasty dish to share. I am in the all-white kitchen making the whipped cream, repeatedly asking my mother if it is done yet because I have no idea that this is a precious task that I will miss for the remainder of my life after 44. Nope, I am wishing I was in the back of the loft on the fire escape getting secretly stoned and listening to Carole King … “I feel the earth move under my feet” and thinking to myself that time just wouldn’t pass fast enough because I have so many dreams to accomplish. Oh how I wish I knew then what I know now – that I just can’t seem to get time to slow down. I am flooded with memories, and lemon bread was there for all of them. I never realized all of those people, especially my mom, wouldn’t be in the world I was still in someday. Grandma Sara, all four-feet of her looking up at me through Mr. Magoo glasses asking “How’s your love life?”, and Poppy slipping me a sly twenty with a wink as if it were understood this was only between the two of us. “Here you go darling”, he said as if I were the only one. Even though he did the same thing with my siblings. I also recall the time we had a hundred “Iran Sucks” buttons as ornaments on our Chrismakkah tree because of the gas crisis. I so wish I had a picture of this, but it is only in my mind’s eye. Remembering my mom grabbing my arm and saying, “Feel me, I’m having a hot flash.” But she had always felt warm to me and she always had such warm healing hands. I think the indifference of my reaction was always a letdown to her. Now I look up and say, “I get it, Mom.”

I like to think Diana’s mom and my mom are smiling upon us as if they knew this was the plan all along. That in this wonderful, amazing, heartbreaking and creative time in our lives we would meet and we would get along smashingly well. I also like to think that when it’s our time and we’ve lived a life full of fulfilling our dreams and loving our lives as much as we could they’d be on the other side to greet us with warm tortillas and lemon bread. And all would feel almost perfect again, as if none of us had ever parted.

It’s 1:33am and I am so excited that I woke myself up and had to write this, as now I know who I will be making my lemon bread for. I wonder if I freeze two mini loaves and wrap them with bubble wrap and stick them in a flat rate express mail envelope if they will get to Diana in California alright, and if she will taste the love I put into them. I sure hope so. Oh, and in case you were wondering, I figure my number is 844. That’s how many times lemon bread was made for me. But that’s another story…