On KJZZ's SOAPBOX, The Show turns over the the mic to listeners. For the spring 2022, writers tackled the theme LOST.
Curls of steam trail behind the pastel blue Crock-Pot as Mama carefully delivers it to the table. The alluring aroma of meat, cheese, peppers and tomato sauce fills the room. One sister bounces in her chair, barely able to contain her excitement. The other watches intensely, her tiny fist gripping her fork until her knuckles turn white. Mama looks like she walked out of a '90s department store advertisement with her loose pink capris and matching polo. Her voice is playful and light as she calls out, “Dinner’s ready!”
We don’t eat until father’s at the table so we anxiously wait for him to come out of his home office. He enters and begins to pass Mama but is halted by the delicious smell of her tireless efforts. He turns to her, he thanks her, he kisses her sweetly on the cheek. Then we sit down to devour the delicious embodiment of her endless love.
This is pure fantasy.
While my mama’s mostaccioli was in fact the embodiment of her endless love, there was no family. I dreamt of the perfect family time rituals because our truths were too horrendous to acknowledge. Through the decades, this vision of family fueled my pursuit of something better. I spent years sharing love through my food in hopes that I would see the same twinkle in my child’s eye and feel the undeniable admiration in my partner’s touch.
I believe it was a Saturday morning in May of 2021 when it happened.
I’d curated a traditional Pain Perdu, a perfectly cooked French omelet and a savory avocado and goat cheese mixed green salad. I’d even rummaged through my son’s excessive but essential berry stash to enhance the Top Chef plating of my morning’s masterpiece. As I sprinkled the final touches of powdered sugar, I bellowed,
“Breakfast is ready!
Come on now, hurry up!
Please people, come on!”
Moments later, my husband brushed past me, grunting something like a, “Thanks babe … good morning.” My son, seemingly unaware of how easy it is to simply climb into an empty chair, crawls over my back and neck to the smallest space between Mom and Dad.
And then I watched … I simply stared as they both devoured hours of my work in minutes and immediately retreated to their prospective corners of our tiny quarantined world.
It was at that moment, surrounded by crumbs and half eaten raspberries, that my old fantasy was lost forever. It was then that the magnificence of my not so wholesome reality truly set it; my adoring husband going to and from his, now, home office, grunting words of love and bumps of affirmation.
My 2-year-old in-house dictator aggressively cheering on my efforts in the kitchen every day … all day.
And substitute the '90s polo for a crop top and I am Mama, cooking up more love than a madame in a New York City brothel.