Eating traditions.

 
   Christmas Eve my mother made the same lasagna every year. She would start the meat sauce in the morning and it would simmer on the stove all day, filling the house with it's aroma, warmth and promise of a delicious meal to come. Every time I make her lasagna, I think of her moving around our kitchen with care on a cold winter's day.
   On Christmas morning she made french toast and served it on a mismatched set of Christmas plates. Some of the plates were her grandmothers and some were hers from when she was little. On Christmas morning, I make french toast the way she taught me, with plenty of milk to make it moist, cinnamon and vanilla, and serve it on the same dishes. Placing the old Rudolf plate that my sister and I loved, in front of my little boy.
   For Christmas parties she made a lemon poppy seed cake and an upside down pineapple cake. I have not made them many times but I do think of them come Christmas and remember the taste of that sweet lemon filling layered with the speckled yellow lemon cake and the tiny soft crunch of the black poppy seeds. I would like to make this one again. Maybe this year.
   On Easter morning there was always an Easter basket outside my bedroom door when I woke. Little trinkets circling a chocolate bunny in the center. When I had grown old enough, I would leave her a basket outside her door too. And when she was gone, I would exchange baskets with boyfriends. Even my Jewish ones. Now I have two little boys to make Easter baskets for and I let my husband off the hook. We don't exchange baskets anymore.
   Thanksgivings at her brother's house, my Aunt would place one foil wrapped chocolate turkey on each plate. I thought they were so pretty and such a special thing. A dessert before dinner. Amazing. Any time I have made a Thanksgiving dinner at home, I have searched to find foil covered chocolate turkeys to put on each plate. I wonder if my mom brought a specific thing for Thanksgiving every year. If she did, I was not aware or can't remember now.
   My favorite baking traditions were for my birthday. Every year she made me a pink lemonade ice cream cake and moon cookies. The cake had a pale pink, frozen, lemonade whipped frosting, yellow cake and layer of pink lemonade ice cream in the center. Even when I went off to college, she made this cake and put in a cooler packed with ice and drove it from Long Island into the city to my dorm. I think she may have been a little superstitious about it.
   The moon cookies were crescent moon sugar cookies. When I was in elementary school, she would make vanilla cupcakes and dye vanilla frosting a light blue. Each cupcake would have a moon cookie and those pastel flower, almost star shaped sprinkles. When I was born I had a big round face and she said, "Ohhhh, you look like the moon...." and I looked back at her and made a little O with my mouth. And so she called me moon.
   I have made the cake a few times. I think I had made the cookies and then for a long time I could not as I had lost the recipe. Until an old and dear friend told me she had saved it for me just in case. And so I made them again. And there they were, like an old friend themselves, so happy to be reacquainted. This year another old and dear friend held out my mother's moon cookie cutter and said, "Is this yours?" I recognized it right away. I must have given it to her to hold or for some other reason. I can't remember. But had forgotten. I was so glad to see it.
   My birthday is in a few days. I am going to make the cake and maybe even some cookies. I have already made a home made organic lemonade concentrate. Imagine?
   I have been a little off kilter lately. In need of parenting. Wishing for supportive words, encouragement, guidance, a true and loyal fan. I find ways to parent myself. To take good care. I try to celebrate and encourage myself. And I find that keeping a tradition like baking a well loved and remembered cake on a birthday or preparing a meal from an old stained and familiar recipe card in my mom's handwriting is a peaceful respite.
   I was lying in bed this morning thinking about baking this cake and making the time and why it was important. How keeping traditions is like a bird flying a great distance and each repeated tradition is like the bird alighting in a tree to rest for a moment. Or a needle and thread moving into and out of fabric, keeping even stitches to hold a seam or create a pretty, even boarder. Each time we repeat a tradition, the needle touches the fabric and sends it's string through to hold time in place, to mark the days in an even pattern.
  I am the keeper of traditions in our house now. I guess most mothers are. Maybe because we feel the passage of time so deeply, watching our children grow and change before our eyes. Wanting to remind them to alight on this tree for a minute. Rest. Celebrate this life we have together. Acknowledge each other and the love we share every day through our comings and goings, moving from one thing to the next, day by day. Here. Here we are. It is a special day again. The earth has moved around the sun and we barely noticed. It says so right here on the calendar. This day has a flavor and a taste and color. And like little magnets, this cake, this dish, binds us with the day with pleasure, reminding us of all the days like it that came before.
  

Home Town Memorial

   Yesterday I went to a memorial service in my home town. The town on Long Island where I grew up and made my first friends. A place I miss and a place that feels like a dream when I return, parts of it so familiar and parts of it transformed and new, thinner in places and lusher in others. 

   Yesterday, I returned to be with one of my first friends. To stand watch like a knight on a chess board, to protect the air around her and see, hear and feel the day at her side. We were there for her mother's memorial.

   It felt important to be solid. I felt like I was willing my cells to hold tighter to each other, not to let any space move between them. Hold still and hold fast, do not melt, do not flit, or dissipate. Do not weep.

   Her family was so beautiful, wild and funny, and linked like golden chain. Each of them a gold loop bound to the other that wound around the room. Her mother's childhood friends were like a witches coven that sat in a tight circle of twelve after the service, their knees touching, taking notes, backs straight, listening to each other talk. They looked like they were planning a revolution, probably having more to do with literature and gardening.

   My mother died in the same town. In her own home. From cancer too. It was a long time ago. When she died, I drifted out into my life, my line cut, grasping at branches, searching for a path in a wood that seemed too overgrown and not the one I was prepared for. And I find myself now in what feels like a place very far from home. Like I have fallen through a portal into another time and space. But sometimes, the portal opens back up and I can step gently through for a little while and see where I came from and sometimes I am even met by friends who knew me then. Friends who knew me and somehow, magically, still do. Time travelers,  dream walkers, all of them.

   I have gone back to my childhood home, where I lived with my mother. It belongs to someone else now and everything in it has changed. The walls have moved. The colors, the light, the smells, the trees, all different. It seems smaller. And ruined. I cannot go home, after all. That home is gone.

   I stayed with my friend at the memorial and I waited. Wanting to be there as long as she needed me, as long as she'd let me be there to hold the space around her. Just to wait. To be and to wait. To be ready for anything or nothing. Whatever she needed.

   When most everyone had gone home, some of us went back with her to her childhood home, still her Father's place. The same one I had spent so much time in as a little girl and a young woman. It was as I remembered it. It was as I remembered it.... It is still there. Like a capsule, also like a dream, the same and different at the same time. It's an incredible thing to me.

   Her father walked past me with purpose, through the house, asking loudly, "What does everyone want?" We could have all been children at a sleepover. We had been a minute ago. And there stood my friend's younger sister with a menu from Gino's. The same place they ordered from when we were kids. 

  Her younger brother and sister are adults now but I could still see the little kids they were. Like looking at small children in adult costumes. Age progression holograms.

   We stood around the table, I beside my good and dear friend, listening to her talk. Pulling daisies out of a vase, splitting the stems, turning my fingernails green and lacing flower after flower together. I placed a daisy crown on her head. My beautiful friend, with her joy in place, her heart full and tender, sipping white wine, debating with her sister at her side, who was the favored child. The wine buoying her like a float in a pool. Glad she did not have to tread water, let her float. And I rest my arms on the side of her float and look up at her, my legs moving through the water. She tells me about me, like she's gazing into a crystal ball, finding me there.  She is love and she has always been there and vows to always be. I am lifted.

    She is so smart. She is strong and confident. She is whole and capable. And she loves me anyway. Before I go, she tells me, with tears in her eyes, how proud my mother would be of me. And it is all I can do to hold my cells together at all. Not to fall through the floor into the basement and disperse, soaked up by concrete, fizzling into it's pores. We sit on her mother's white couch, in her mother's beautiful living room, surrounded by books and her mother's beautiful things. Our Mother's daughters. Both of us now mothers of our own sons. Looking into each other's eyes, holding hands. I came to take care of her and she took care of me right back.

   There are few things as magical and valuable as old friends. People who can look at you and see you as you are and at the same time, see you as you were. All of the you in between.

   Mothers are this way. They see you wholly. And when that sight is gone, you can find it in an old friend's eyes and return it with a full heart. It is a treasure to hold onto. For as long as you can.

   When I left, she walked me to the door and leaned out into the night. I walked down her parent's front walk in the dark. "You're a good one," she called out to me. "So are you," I answered. And we are. We are good and our mother's would be proud.