birthday, I had been Mom’s apprentice every time she baked. I shadowed her as she beat butter and sugar into glossy gold batter for bishop’s cake. We made luscious lemon squares with tart, bright notes of citrus and a buttery shortbread base. She letme dust powdered sugar across their gooey tops. I helped by cracking eggs into the bowl and running a knife along the top of her measuring cups, letting the excess flour drop off the sides. I learned the timing. I learned the precision. I learned the delicate nature of baking. And my favorite: the requisite taste testing. There was value in licking every battered spoon and every frosting-laden finger. What, exactly, that value was, I’m not aware, but my belly knew, and I’d say that’s enough. I left most major decisions to that part of me—to the wisdom of my waist.
Having spent years at Mom’s side, asking questions, watching cupcakes dome through the oven door, I learned to read almost exclusively by recipe cards. They served as flash cards, lined up neatly in the pattern of the alphabet.
Apple Pie, Banana Bread, Carrot Cake …
And somehow, without consciously realizing the transition, I became the baker. I sat there in our kitchen—now thirteen and unsure if it was hunger or just loneliness that brought me there—and recreated the confections we once made together. The ones that drew me, nose first, into the kitchen tied themselves to moments in my life and tucked themselves away in the closet of my memory.
Double fudge brownies as fat and dense as bricks, coconut white-chocolate blondies, cashmere custards so thick they’d remain stuck to a spoon held upside down, spicy molasses cookies, and all things that conjured lust. As I yanked each of them from the oven’s mouth, never quite making a clean getaway without some form of heat blister, I felt full. Our apartment wasn’t so lonely with two dozen cupcakes cooling on the kitchen counter. It wasn’t so quiet when the timer dinged and the mixer churned. There was less to notice when my hands were knuckle-deep in kneading dough.
And when I wasn’t baking, when I wasn’t all alone in my ownkitchen, Mom drove me to Boston to stay with her sister Maureen; Maureen’s husband, Mike; and their kids, Michael, Matt, and Meredith. I spent weekends, summer breaks, vacations, and holidays with them when Mom had to work. If only I’d had an
M
name, I might have forgotten that I wasn’t one of them. Maureen and Mike treated me no differently than their own children; my cousins—all around my age—accepted me as a sister. I experienced a kind of nurturing—a sense of structure and normalcy—that I hadn’t known before. I was happy there. I was a kid there. But sometimes, in quiet moments when I’d turn the corner into their kitchen to see Mike tinkering with a school project for Michael, or when I’d take notice of Matt’s report card hung proudly on the fridge, or when I’d watch Maureen French-braid Meredith’s hair for her dance recital, I’d be jolted back to the reality that this perfect family was not truly mine. At my house, no one was there to help me with projects, no one knew if I brought my report card home or not, and even if Mom could braid my hair, it would be unlikely that she’d be able to make it to my recital. When Mom would come to pick me up, even though I’d have missed her terribly, I’d stare out the car window as we’d drive away, back toward Maureen’s big, beautiful yellow house and wish that I could stay.
Back in Medfield, I found other surrogate families—those of my best friends, Kate and Nicole. Nicole’s dad, Paul, was the one to drive me home most school nights after he’d cooked dinner for all of us. I always felt a pang of guilt, no matter how many times he reassured me that it was no trouble at all shuttling me back to my apartment, because I knew it couldn’t have been easy to juggle all that he did. On top of being a volunteer firefighter, he also worked a
Having spent years at Mom’s side, asking questions, watching cupcakes dome through the oven door, I learned to read almost exclusively by recipe cards. They served as flash cards, lined up neatly in the pattern of the alphabet.
Apple Pie, Banana Bread, Carrot Cake …
And somehow, without consciously realizing the transition, I became the baker. I sat there in our kitchen—now thirteen and unsure if it was hunger or just loneliness that brought me there—and recreated the confections we once made together. The ones that drew me, nose first, into the kitchen tied themselves to moments in my life and tucked themselves away in the closet of my memory.
Double fudge brownies as fat and dense as bricks, coconut white-chocolate blondies, cashmere custards so thick they’d remain stuck to a spoon held upside down, spicy molasses cookies, and all things that conjured lust. As I yanked each of them from the oven’s mouth, never quite making a clean getaway without some form of heat blister, I felt full. Our apartment wasn’t so lonely with two dozen cupcakes cooling on the kitchen counter. It wasn’t so quiet when the timer dinged and the mixer churned. There was less to notice when my hands were knuckle-deep in kneading dough.
And when I wasn’t baking, when I wasn’t all alone in my ownkitchen, Mom drove me to Boston to stay with her sister Maureen; Maureen’s husband, Mike; and their kids, Michael, Matt, and Meredith. I spent weekends, summer breaks, vacations, and holidays with them when Mom had to work. If only I’d had an
M
name, I might have forgotten that I wasn’t one of them. Maureen and Mike treated me no differently than their own children; my cousins—all around my age—accepted me as a sister. I experienced a kind of nurturing—a sense of structure and normalcy—that I hadn’t known before. I was happy there. I was a kid there. But sometimes, in quiet moments when I’d turn the corner into their kitchen to see Mike tinkering with a school project for Michael, or when I’d take notice of Matt’s report card hung proudly on the fridge, or when I’d watch Maureen French-braid Meredith’s hair for her dance recital, I’d be jolted back to the reality that this perfect family was not truly mine. At my house, no one was there to help me with projects, no one knew if I brought my report card home or not, and even if Mom could braid my hair, it would be unlikely that she’d be able to make it to my recital. When Mom would come to pick me up, even though I’d have missed her terribly, I’d stare out the car window as we’d drive away, back toward Maureen’s big, beautiful yellow house and wish that I could stay.
Back in Medfield, I found other surrogate families—those of my best friends, Kate and Nicole. Nicole’s dad, Paul, was the one to drive me home most school nights after he’d cooked dinner for all of us. I always felt a pang of guilt, no matter how many times he reassured me that it was no trouble at all shuttling me back to my apartment, because I knew it couldn’t have been easy to juggle all that he did. On top of being a volunteer firefighter, he also worked a
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