Today, a personal essay that has been in the works for a long time. I hope today’s essay brings just one of you solace.
I make my own bread. Flour. Water. Salt. Yeast. Mix, then knead. I dig my fingers into the dough. Feel its guts. Wrap it in on itself. Roll it around and around, scrape it off the counter, dust more flour, push and pull and beat. “You have to work it,” they say. “It should be smooth like a baby’s bottom.” A last sigh, I drop it to the counter. Run my finger along the top. I wonder if that’s how my bottom felt.
I imagine my mother powdering me, pulling the diaper and taping it. Cooing, “My little sunshine.” Her coarse hair, worn from years of changing color. Her smiling green eyes. Sometimes blue, sometimes brown, sometimes golden if the sun was shining. Her smell. Lavender lotion, making her hands soft and slippery. I can still feel my mother’s hands now, her long nails combing their way through my hair. She sings me U2 songs to mold me into a cool girl, shows me how to push three fingers down to say “rock on” without words. Or two to say “I love you.”
It has been five years since she died. Five years and all I can remember is her body. What it felt like, what it looked like, the way her face felt with makeup on, the size of her pores. Maybe I am stuck in her body because it is no longer here. I wish I could touch it, inspect it, find the cancer and pull it out myself. Six months, gone. “We tried,” the doctors said. Not very hard, I still think.
I remember when my mother told me about the cancer. She held my hand and said, “It could be malignant or benign. We don’t know yet.” Both words sounded bad to me.
We were sitting in a coffee shop that had pennants on the walls and chipped wooden tables. There was a heart in one corner, drawn with a pencil. I thought about erasing it.
I push and pull and slap the bread until it is elastic enough that a piece can stretch for two inches without breaking. That means there’s enough gluten. Without it, the bread would be flat and airless. But I want big, round bubbles, the kind you pop with your fingers or fill with butter. I want to see the threads stretch when you tear it. I want the crust to be so thick that you have to put your elbows into it when you rip off a piece.
I think about the people who came to her funeral. They pushed their way to my side, saying things like, “Do you remember me? I knew you when you were this big. You look so much like her.” I couldn’t make eye contact with them. What did they want me to say? I could see their eyes sparkling out of the corner of my eye, waiting for my hand to move like hers when I push my hair behind my ear. Hunters waiting to trap me in glass.
After the funeral, I look in the mirror. I touch the bridge of my nose, the famous big boned Johnson nose, like hers. I measure the degrees versus the memory. I furrow my brow, then smile, check my teeth. Pick at a zit on my cheek. I remember dozing off in bed with my mother at my feet, talking softly. Pushing her away when she’d pick at my face. She’d remind me to wash it morning and night.
I slash the top of the dough twice with a sharp knife in an x shape, put the bread in the oven and fill a hot pan with water to create steam. A warm, wet hole for the bread to grow and harden in. I sit in front of the oven and watch the bread change.
I’m scared of what my life will be and is without her. Everything is the same and nothing is the same. I feared death so much as a child it would frustrate her. But she would still let me crawl into her bed and tell me to think good thoughts. I always thought of a field of flowers, trapped in a globe full of sunshine.
I wish I could fall into the ground and pull her back up, our arms stretching like rubber bands, wrapping around and around until our bodies are intertwined and we look like a slinky.
But all I would find is ash and dirt. Her body is gone, and there is a hole in my heart I fill with food.
It’s Hurley Winkler’s birthday today. She is an incredible friend and mentor. This essay has been in progress for five years, and Hurley has seen many versions of it. It’s now in the place it belongs because of her care. Wish her a happy birthday, and follow her newsletter Lonely Victories.
If you liked this essay, please share it with a friend. The next issue will be released in December.