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My mom taught me to write sentences the same way she taught me to cook: copy, follow the formula, and act like you know what you are doing. I never knew the science and couldn’t grasp the intuition, so my meals and my sentences have since followed a harried, haphazard method of shooting into the dark. I’ve always been envious of natural cooks, seemingly able to read a recipe once, if they need one at all, and intuit a series of relaxed motions, complete with spoon tasting and confident dashes from a salt well. Instead, I have cried over disappointing Pinterest recipes and settled for yet another Tuesday night grilled cheese.
I hate recipes because I hate following instructions—the reading and stopping and double-checking. I push IKEA furniture assembly onto the closest person I can sweet-talk, and have never watched more than, like, 30 seconds of an instructional YouTube video. I do not like learning. I prefer already being good. But, I have too many student loans to Seamless my meals like all the other New Yorkers and I have to be fed so much—somehow all the time—and I’m the only one to do it.
My mom writes her grocery list on the back of a small envelope, coupons tucked inside. The grocery list is organized by type: meat, dairy, dry goods, produce. Her local grocery store of choice was Fred Meyer, an Idaho and Pacific Northwest staple, chosen, in part, for its cleanliness and coupon-filled weekly flier, but mostly I think for “Playland,” the in-store daycare where she would drop off one, two, three, or all four of us kids. She always told me to look away if Snow White was played (witchcraft) on the Playland VHS, but I would watch it anyway.
I say I get my groceries delivered in New York because I’m lazy, but it’s because grocery stores, here at least, make me sad. I like to be alone, typically prefer it, but somehow the act here is too bleak for even a comfortably solitary person. The code-violating aisles, flaccid produce, and general disorganization of a reasonably-priced Brooklyn grocery store is depressing enough, but carrying the heavy bags home, by myself, it is too much. It feels like traveling alone and hustling your luggage with you into the airport bathroom stall—there is no one around to watch it. So instead I carry the bags of groceries from the evil corporation up four flights of stairs and supplement with herbs, bread, and eggs from the farmer’s market. The Saturday market after 9am is hectic and unhinged in the way normal things in New York tend to be, but I get in and out quickly and pick up my library books on the short walk home.
My mom writes her meal plan on a single sheet of wide-ruled paper, ordered by day and cookbook page number. I’ve noticed, now, on my sister’s fridge, the exact same format on the same wide-ruled paper. My mom’s recipes were acquired from Quick Cooking magazine, cookbooks promising easy family meals, and her memory. I’m more lose than the other Haupt women—I list meals in the notes app and buy the right things and cook whatever I feel like on any given night.
My mom cooked because moms, unfortunately, cook. I don’t know how she did it every single night for decades, without being able to google how to cut a butternut squash, for six people including an ungrateful, picky child that most definitely was not me. Most of the ways I feel like a woman don’t remotely resemble my mother. We have two different definitions of being people, certainly being women, and I’m always taken aback when an adult woman says she called her mom to get her opinion on something—career advice, money, love. That has never occurred to me as an option. I say I am not jealous. That’s true, actually. But, I am sad. The only times her and I have ever connected on a peer-like level have been over cooking and workplace sexual harassment stories. Womanhood, I guess.
I used to try and translate my life and the way I think into boxes she and my dad might understand, but not long ago I gave up. The chasm reached a depth I wasn’t willing to cross. A lethal combination of their stubbornness was combined in me—ironically their quiet, easiest child. Last year when I was too stubborn and mad to reach out for the recipe, I somehow made her amazing baked macaroni and cheese from my own memory and intuition. It worked, I was amazed. Something had taken over and I knew when to add the flour and to turn down the heat and what cheeses to buy and exactly when to pull from the oven. The impressive feat did not feel victorious. I had betrayed some pact we had, where I still needed her—my mom.
In the past, silent years I have gotten better at cooking. My friend Meg the other day was like, “Kara’s an amazing cook.” Just like that, rolled off her tongue! I’ve fed her maybe four times, sandwiches mostly. I do make great sandwiches. I have learned some of the science, know not to burn the garlic, and to triple it, in fact. I’ve learned about salting water and what temperature to fry the egg. I can tell I undercooked the lentils by sight and I’ve even perfected a KitchenAid pizza dough. I still don’t have a salt well. It’s because of the recipes—of trying and “learning.”
A few weeks ago, my friend Eric and I canned applesauce. I texted her for the recipe, the safe place where we exchange pleasantries every few weeks. Phone calls and real conversations still inaccessible. Her recipes are in storage because five months ago my parents left the city and house I grew up in, to move to a tiny, mountain town. My mom is unhappy, my sister has told me. She emailed it to me—from memory. I half-read Internet recipes, watched my typical 30 seconds of a YouTube video, and double-checked her email. There were discrepancies and I had questions, do we really need to boil the applesauce again? I called her for the first time in years. We talked through the problem and asked about each other’s days. Told me to call again soon.
Neither of us know what to do with each other, so it seems like I’m either going to need to can pickles soon, or lose some of this inherited pride. Be a better daughter. Call again soon. I think I can do that.
If you like these letters, would you mind passing them along to a friend, or tweeting about them? xo.
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