By Trennesia Jackson
Fall 2012 Kaplan Award Winner
“Bzzzzzzzzzzzz”
“Mommy the cookies! I think their done”
As my mom opens the gargantuan black machine I once thought was a time machine, but now know it as the oven, and pulls out the sheet of golden brown chocolate chip cookies, my stomach begins to leap with joy. But before these cookies were finished there was a process they went through. I have always had a sweet tooth; candy, cake, cookies, ice cream, if it was sweet and I thought it tasted good, I’d eat it. As a child and still even now, I can always count on there being sweets in my home. A love for sweets is one thing my mom and I shared as well as baking cookies.
“Ok Nesia, we need flour, sugar, brown sugar, chocolate chips,..” As my mom began to read off the ingredients, my little milk chocolate colored feet would scurry around the kitchen to try and find them. I’d run around the kitchen as fast as I could, trying to gather each item before my imaginary clock ran out. And after that I had to turn to asking mom where the items were. It was like a big treasure hunt for me, except the reward wasn’t gold It was time with my mom. You see as a child I feared that If I took too long to find the ingredients, she’d get out of the baking mood and would just want to watch tv or do work. My mom always working, she’s accountant; while sleeping sometimes I could hear her still working, clicking away and crunching numbers. Now the tricky part was that the spot where each ingredient was would always change. My mom didn’t really have time to cook so my dad (step dad, never knew the bastard who was my biological father) placed everything where he wanted. Then after the divorce my mom put the items where she wanted. Then when my mom began dating women and my, now step mom came into the picture, she placed everything where she wanted. And that would always change. After a while the placement of simple cooking ingredients became just as unreliable and confusing as my family structure became.
After a while you get used to not knowing where things are. And after a while I just began to check to see if they were in a different spot. While baking with my mother there would always be one item that we could never find. So I’d tip toe to the door that led to the upstairs and open it. “Mommuh!!” as my voice traveled up the stairs, bouncing off the walls and into my step mother’s ears, an unpleasant “What?” would always follow. Even though she knew that neither my mother nor I knew where the ingredient was, she’d simply say “Make sure you look everywhere carefully.” As I scurried back to the kitchen for round two of the search I’d tell my mom the orders from the woman upstairs and we’d continue the search. After wasting 10 minutes trying to find this phantom ingredient, I’d call back up the stairs and give my step mom the bad news. I never walked up the stairs to tell her, I’d just yell it. I’d rather not have to look at the sheer utter of disappointment on her face. As I heard fussing and rolling around, followed by an “I’m coming”, I’d just gently close the door and walk back to the kitchen.
As I walked back to the kitchen a wave of disappointment would come over my body. You could hear the woman upstairs stomping around trying to find her shoes, as she began to walk down the stairs, each step sounded louder and louder. When that door opened I was waiting for big foot or a gigantic monster to pop out. But the medium height, light chocolate brown woman of medium built that was my step mother; she was strong but yet not fully toned in all areas of her body. As her feet slid to the kitchen and the bags under her eyes began to darken and droop down, you could tell she was tired. This was probably due the hours of radiation treatment she had been going through for the past few months, just looking at her made me tired. When she opened her mouth to speak you could hear the sickness. Her once full of life and energetic voice had become raspy, tired, and low. “What you need?” she’d say. This time it was flour, no matter what it was, she’d always seem to find it quickly. Then after she’d find it she’d hand it to me and say “You never look hard enough, next time I ain’t gon help you.” As I nodded my head, and gave my mom the ingredients, she slowly slinked back to her cave of sickness and tiresomeness. My step mom was a New Yorker; an outspoken, said what was on her mind, strong personality, intimidating New Yorker. So I was always iffy about asking her for anything.
After finding all the ingredients we were finally on our way, we’d wash our hands, look at each other and smile. We’d flick water or flour on each other as step two, the making of the cookies would commence. Cooking and baking went far back on my mother’s side, everybody knew how to bake. Apple Pie, Millionaire Pie, cakes, tarts, cookies, you name it we had a recipe for it. My mother and I tended to make all our cookies from scratch. If we were trying to spend quality time with one another we’d make them from scratch because we knew we had that extra time we could spend with one another. But if we just wanted to eat cookies and didn’t have that much time to spend with one another, we’d just buy the pre-made cookies, pop them into the oven, and take out when ready. It was easy, but it sometimes took the fun out of baking, there was no real work you needed to put into it.
My mother was always a busy women, being that during the time when my step mom had Breast cancer she was the sole provider for the family and the one bringing home the bacon she was always busy. She worked two jobs, so we hardly spent time with each other. My mom is a strong and intelligent woman and after those years I will always see her as such. Even though she was always busy, hardly went to any of my basketball games, and rarely baked cookies with me, because I knew the value of her pay check was crucial to our family; taking care of our needs became more important than spending time with me. I got used to it after a while; it gave me more time to spend more time with my step mom and dad.
When my dad and I baked cookies, we never made them from scratch and they never tasted like the ones my mom and I would make. They tasted full of shame, guilt, and depression. I’m concluding that this was because my dad had begun to let himself go. I lost my dad the day my mom finalized their divorce, I didn’t even know what was happening. I had been off in my own little world then, Boom! Divorce! I guess I felt like most teenagers did when their parents went through a divorce but each person in my family took it differently. My mom submerged herself in her work and my dad let himself go, it’s as if he lost his purpose in life. After a while I guess I began to look more attractive than all the women who had been acquainted with my father because he treated me as such. That’s probably why the cookies tasted like shame and guilt, he knew what he had been doing was wrong, and since he knew like everybody else that sweets were my “sweet spot”, I guess those not fully baked, doughy cookies were supposed to be a good enough apology. But for me unless you can bake a cookie that can bring back my virginity and take away the pain and memories, no cookie he could have ever made would suffice.
The only cookies that were even decent to even comparing to my mom’s cookies were my step moms. That’s probably because the sheer love and compassion she had shown me was more than my mother and father had done in my entire life combined. They didn’t taste better than me and my mother’s though. I craved for my mother’s attention and baking with her brought a sense of peace to my heart, a sense of happiness. You can only get that type of feeling from that one person in which you yearn it from, so nobodies cookies will ever compare to the ones me and my mom make. My mom and I just made cookies the other weekend and she let me take some home. My roommates made cookies and let me have some. Sure enough, they didn’t taste the same. Nothing could compare to that. Baking with my mom and step mom were times where there was laughter and we all had a good time. During those times in my house it was well needed.
After we placed the cookies in the oven and let them cook, step three would be placed in motion. Step three was to let them cook. But for me step three was more like a reflecting moment full of relaxation. As my mom and I would wait for the cookies to be finished we’d watch tv. Watching tv was another thing me and my mom did to spend time together. It was in a sense like therapy for we could watch tv shows and feel better about ourselves or watch a comedy show and laugh all the pain we’ve been feeling away. We’d watch Law and Order, dramas, movies, comedy shows. If it was on tv and appealing to us we’d watch it. As time went by we’d sit and enjoy each other’s company, sometimes even forgetting about the cookies. And when that happened my mom would always say “Somebody will eat em” and sure enough somebody always did.