Cooking for Mom: Making a connection via the kitchen

Originally Published in the Atlanta-Journal Constitution

1975 – I came home from school and there was an acrid, alien smell in the house. Something burning, fleshy, sharp. 

I was 14. I put my book bag down in the front hall and hurried into the TV room, where my mother was in her usual position, sprawled on the sofa, watching the last few minutes of "General Hospital." 

"What's that smell?" I demanded.

"Maybe it's the hamburger, " she answered wanly, not taking her eyes from the screen. 

"Oh, Mom, " I moaned and rushed to the stove. Inside was a severely warped package of shrink-wrapped hamburger meat. Fat was bubbling under the plastic surface and blackish, greasy drops dripped to the oven floor.

When Mom forgot to thaw dinner in time, she sometimes turned the oven on to "warm" to speed the process. But today she had made a mistake: The oven was set to 350.

"I'll take care of dinner, " I yelled from the kitchen.

"Thank you, sweetie, " she called back. 

I transferred the hamburger to the sink with two spatulas. I gingerly peeled off the plastic wrap and the deformed Styrofoam pan underneath. The sizzling meat on the edges smelled and tasted horrible, so I cut it back to the center, where it was still red and (ta-da) thawed. 

Mom came into the kitchen after her show was over and surveyed the damage with a smile hovering on her lips. She wore a sleeveless sundress that tented over her round form. (Her bust line had gotten so voluminous she sometimes referred to it as her "ledge.") She stood there with her left wrist pressed to her hip and her hand splayed backward. Her hair was flyaway gray, and her cheek was cool and clammy when I gave her the perfunctory son's peck I knew she wanted. 

"What's for dinner?" I asked.

"Spaghetti, " she said with a low laugh, eyeing the curled Styrofoam in the sink. 

I began frying onions and garlic in the old cast-iron skillet. Mom, complaining of a headache, went to lie down on the sofa with a Harlequin Romance novel. She read one a day, sometimes two. They arrived by the box at our front door. I crumbled the meat, which still smelled foul, into the pan. I added the cans of tomato and as many spices as I could find on the beige Lazy Susan next to the stove. I added oregano. I added curry.

Dad came home at 6:30, as he did every night. "I'm home, " he bellowed from the front hall.

"We're having spaghetti, " Mom called back. With her first show of energy, she heaved up from the sofa and went to meet him in the hall. They kissed with pursed lips, making the "mmmmm" sound. 

I brought the big orange spaghetti bowl to the table, and we ate. It was a Simpsonsesque snarf, over in 20 minutes. 

Mom loved to eat. The sauce tasted a little like curried plastic, but it wasn't awful. Dad, who had an iron palate, told her it was delicious. 

I know now there were several reasons for my mother's depression. She had nearly died during open-heart surgery two years before. The recovery was hell. 

But I think in retrospect, the main problem was she was lonely. All of her kids except me were off in college. Her teaching career was over. Her husband worked constantly, ironically, as a psychiatrist taking care of depressed people. Most of her friends had given up on her because she had gotten just too weird. 

I was there for her but didn't quite know what to do to show her my love. Except cook.