That Smell Takes Me Back

My childhood was far from idyllic.  I was raised by a single, bi-polar, struggling and hard working mother.  In the upswings, we were happy; but in the downswings - well...it was difficult.  I never got a sense of what normal was, save for 'looking into someone else's front window' and imagining their life as mine.  In ways, I suppose I was very normal in the sense that when I grew up, I was going to be nothing like her.

What really happened is that while I've been able to patch the holes that were missing in my childhood for my children (they've never known what it feels like to be really hungry, or to eat the same meal four nights in one week, or to not be able to get new shoes when the ones you are wearing hurt so bad you want to cry, or to be ridiculed in school because a classmate - someone I thought was a friend - saw food stamps on our kitchen table and told the whole class, or the awful names I got called because I owned two pair of ill-fitting jeans...from the Salvation Army); I kept the part of that tattered broken home...her love.

I didn't always know it then, but I sure do now...how much she really loved and knew me.  We didn't have much, but she gave me everything I needed.  Much of my childhood and teenage soul soothing came in the form of her baking.  We must have eaten goulash (and not the Hungarian kind) a minimum of three nights a week for God knows how many years - as it's one of the cheapest meals to make - so she could compensate.

When I was hurt, my favorite cookies would appear.
When I was lost, muffins magically showed up.
When I wanted to die, low and behold there was a lemon meringue pie.
And when we had something to celebrate, there was always applesauce cake.

And until literally, just this moment, I never realized that at the time it always fixed those things that were broken in our lives.  A kind of life super glue.

Pondering, I realized I've done this for my family.  When I'm overwhelmed, I bake.  When it's good, I bake.  When it's bad, I bake.  And when words just can't tell them how much I love them, I bake.

This morning on a rare four day weekend, while others are out shopping and pushing through the masses, my family sits.  Happily eating away on their Snickerdoodle muffins, hot out of the oven.  I gazed at their sweet, smiling faces and silently thanked God for my mother, and everything she ever did for me...and I put the next batch of muffins in the oven.