In her desire to be cool in the company of my childhood friends, my mom pushed me away instead of bringing us closer together. I hated that she tried so hard to relate to a bunch of teenagers who thought that their parents were embarrassing no matter what. I didn’t like when she gossiped with my high school friends, and when she passed it as “engaging them in conversation.” She was my mom, not my friend, and nothing was going to change that. It might have been the recent physical separation that comes with moving out for the first time to begin the four-year transition called college that allowed for an unanticipated emotional closeness. Maybe it was a newfound awareness of the vulnerability that radiates from her, as strongly as her seeming immaturity, which allowed me to let her into my life more than before. I know that she just wants to feel needed.
At times she seems so far removed from my life away from home because of the physical distance, which is why I chose to make the 150-mile drive from Kalamazoo to Chicago to make the perfect meal with her for a class assignment.
Our idea of fun rarely coincided when I was in grade school, but we agreed that making homemade pizza was one of those activities that my friends would, and did, enjoy. We decided that we wanted spinach, onion, mushrooms, red bell peppers, red vine tomatoes, sun-dried tomatoes, basil, and fresh mozzarella cheese on our pizza. We already had the dough ingredients, including salt, pepper, and extra virgin olive oil at home.
We went to Trader Joe’s for the ingredients—a quirky grocery store that sells a good selection of organic food and where the cashiers wear Hawaiian shirts to work and say things that my mom enjoys like “Cowabunga dude!” I like to watch her engage them in conversations about their extensive vocabulary of Hawaiian slang because it’s borderline flirtatious. I joke that she’s a “BA (badass) mom” for flirting with younger men, which has become a catchphrase she tries to whip out as much as possible.
I can trace the first times I was embarrassed of my mom to lunchtime in kindergarten, where I arrived with my boxed lunch of turkey sandwiches on four-grain bread (the ends fully attached), carrot or celery sticks, and apple slices for dessert. I was embarrassed by my healthy food, and I knew that everybody assumed it was my mom who prepared it for me. I blamed her for the awkward stares I received through my eighth grade year. I appreciate her insistence on a healthy lifestyle today, which unfortunately never extended to a desire for local foods because the grocery store was more convenient, so Trader Joe’s was a solid alternative. I felt guilty not using local ingredients, but my mom is stubborn so what she says always goes.
We prepared the dough in the food processor before cooking the pizza toppings so it had time to rise. When I was younger, we made it by hand and let it rise for at least several hours. I often made the five-minute walk home from grade school to find my mom and the almost-ready dough in the kitchen. I know I annoyed her when I popped my head into the kitchen every few minutes and whined, “Is it ready NOW?”
The dough was simple: we pulsed warm water, yeast, and flour until it formed a sticky white ball. We placed it in a glass bowl coated with non-stick spray, covered it with plastic wrap, and let it rise for an hour or so. We cooked the onion, spinach, peppers, and mushrooms while we waited. We assembled the toppings in bowls before I rolled out the dough, which was a source of anxiety when I was little because I feel incompetent when my mom was forced to reroll my attempted circle.
I still feel like I’m in grade school when I make pizza with her because I grudgingly ask for her approval on the thickness of the dough and the amount of oil and mozzarella cheese to distribute on top. I want to know how to do it without Mom’s help, but I let her invade my workspace. Even when I’m not dependent on her, she knows how to make me feel like a kid. So I let her pretend that I’m still the golden-blonde-haired toddler who seized her legs when I needed her, and I let her squeeze me tightly as she suffocates me with kisses, because I know a part of her grows sad when witnessing my independence.
But I’m an adult now, so I transfer the dough onto the pizza paddle sprinkled with cornmeal, coat it with olive oil, and arrange the ingredients on top, without her help. I put the olive oil too close to the edge, and there’s too much mozzarella cheese covering the spinach, red peppers, mushrooms, sun-dried tomatoes, onion, vine tomatoes, and basil.
So I ask for her approval in the end because it’s what I’m used to. She informs me of the mistakes I am already aware I’ve made. She does it reluctantly though, because to her I’m still the toddler who doesn’t know any better.
We turned the oven light on every few minutes to watch the mozzarella cheese melt and blanket the vegetables. It came out of the oven as a painter’s palette of crimson, forest green, golden yellow, sepia, and ivory. I started to eat standing up, but she reprimanded me for it so I sat down with her at the table in our kitchenette. Since I only ate it with cheese when I was younger, the sweetness from the onion, the sharpness of the sun dried tomatoes and the peppers, the subtlety of the spinach, the crunch of the thin yet chewy crust, all tasted like adulthood. At the table, we talked about my life away from home.
It took me eighteen years to understand that she’s allowed to be vulnerable. She wants to be close to me, to feel needed, like she was when we were under the same roof. She clings to the past and reverts to the fondest childhood memories—it’s how she compensates for the distance.
This meal wasn’t about the food. She treasures time spent in the kitchen no matter what she’s cooking because it’s where she as a mother will keep giving to her daughter.
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