46.

MOTHER’S SOUP

There couldn’t possibly be more love packed into this little kitchen. My mom, my daughter, and me. Three generations of women, deeply devoted to one another. Mom is gentle and joyful. She was never overbearing, but she’s even more serene now, grateful for each day and the people she loves. I’m more gentle and joyful, too. I quit panicking that I was going to turn into Mom long ago when it became clear I already was her. My only worry now is that during all the years I was so resistant to being like her, I blocked a lot of the goodness I could have inherited. As for my daughter, she has one foot in childhood and one in adulthood, and is standing right on that sweet spot in which she mostly needs to be hugged more than she needs to be belligerent. Today we are all best friends.

The kitchen is a special place for everyone in the family, but when it’s just the three of us in here, as it is today, it’s something more. Something happens. As soon as we get out the pots and pans, as soon as we begin the ancient, honored ritual of making food, all our love and devotion spirals into that other ancient, honored ritual of loving mothers and devoted daughters: We drive each other crazy.

It’s all so beautiful when Mom, my daughter, and I sit and talk in the kitchen, sharing plans and stories. It’s only when we try to cook in the kitchen that trouble happens. Women of our family should never, ever cook in anyone’s kitchen. Not together. Not ever. Especially not this one, the kitchen of kitchens: Mother’s Kitchen.

Every single fork, saltshaker, potholder, cutting board, glass, measuring spoon, bowl, pan—everything has an exact place from which it must be picked up and to which it must be returned. It isn’t bossiness—just Mom’s sweet, maternal belief that everything has its own little home and should be tucked back into it when it’s finished doing its job. Everything also has its own purpose. This knife cuts tomatoes; this one is for bread; this plate is where chopped things go, on this side of the stove; this is the burner that has to be used with that pan. An orderly one-woman monarchy with systems carefully streamlined and perfected over decades to better serve her people. Everything is always just where it should be, including my beautiful mom, whom my daughter and I found standing in her welcoming position a few minutes ago—the Queen right in the middle of her Queendom, arms open wide, lovingly, magnanimously, inviting us in to make the great big mess that will make her insane.

Although . . .

The Queen is beginning this day a little bit on edge because the whole family’s in town for a visit this week, and her refrigerator looks as if it’s been invaded by aliens. The family currently includes two vegetarians, two carnivarians, a pescatarian, a few flexitarians, two gluten-free people, one low-carb and one orthodox vegan, who won’t allow a broccoli floret to be steamed in the same zip code as a hot dog. Before we came, we all emailed Mom our requirements for our morning coffee: whole milk, fat-free milk, lactose-free milk, soy milk, rice-almond milk blend, and non-dairy hazelnut creamer.

I’m a little on edge today because I adore my mom and am supersensitive to how taken advantage of she must feel by all the self-centered, picky members of my family whose obsessive food requirements took over her refrigerator. However, I’m the one who needs whole milk in my coffee, and I’m peeved that Mom either forgot the instructions in my email or simply ran out of room in the refrigerator for me. Coffee with fat-free milk throws my whole system off for the entire day.

My daughter’s a little on edge because she’s nineteen, and that sweet spot on which she’s standing can also feel like a suffocating spot into which she’s stuffed. Especially in the morning, especially when I make her get up before 10:30 a.m. on her vacation.

Three generations on edge. So many reasons not to suggest what I’m about to suggest.

But I am my mother’s daughter. I have optimism wrapped around my DNA like a strand of Christmas lights. Surely our love for one another can see us through one happy cooking experience together. Surely my fear that I’m running out of chances to ask Mom things I’ll wish I’d asked, the reality that this could be the last time we’re ever in her kitchen together . . . Surely I can smile and say thank you instead of getting irritated when Mom tells me I’m slicing celery the wrong way.

Surely the understanding that my adopted daughter is at a time in her life when she’s struggling to know who she is and needs all the happy family memories I can provide to help make up for all the blanks in her family tree . . . Surely that will inspire me not to attack her for the sloppy way she peels a carrot.

Surely the years and years I spent writing about the beautiful, profound, and tangled relationships between mothers and daughters—literally drawing the mom who’s standing in front of me right now as my role model of unfailing forgiveness, love, and good humor . . . Surely some of that will guide me today, in my dual mom-daughter roles, to react with patience and appreciation, and not do what I usually do.

I move between my familial bookends, put an arm around each of them. I am ready to be the loving mother and daughter I know I can be. Ready to embrace this morning of possibility and make it as meaningful as possible for all of us. “Mom,” I say, full of emotion, “I’m so happy to have the three of us here together. I would love it if you would spend this special morning teaching your granddaughter and me how to make your amazing chicken soup.”

Mom looks at me and smiles.

My daughter looks at me and doesn’t smile.

“I’M NOT EATING SOUP IF IT’S MADE FROM A CHICKEN THAT’S BEEN IN GRANDMA’S REFRIGERATOR FOR A MONTH!” she announces.

And we’re off.

Mom quits smiling, clearly sensing I’ve shared some of my concerns about her disregard of expiration dates.

“We have a new chicken!” I hiss to my loudmouthed child. “I bought it yesterday!”

“Why would you buy a new chicken??” Mom asks sharply. “I have a perfectly good chicken in the freezer!”

“I thought we should start with a nice fresh one! One we wouldn’t have to take time to unthaw!” I answer as brightly as possible, not mentioning that we also wouldn’t have to take time for any hospital runs, since her chicken’s been in the freezer since 2011.

“I thought you didn’t eat chicken anymore. Half the family won’t eat chicken!” Mom states.

“I will eat your chicken soup, Mom!” I say, giving her a hug, trying to salvage the moment. “I’ve tried to make it so many times, but your chicken soup doesn’t taste like your chicken soup when I make it. I want us to watch, to work by your side, to learn every step from you!”

I reach into the cupboard and pull out a big pot.

“Not that pot!” Mom declares. She gets on the floor, pulls out half the contents of the cupboard, and retrieves a bigger pot from the back. “This is the pot the soup goes in!”

I feel the first little twinge of annoyance from being corrected before we even start. Mom hands the pot to my daughter and asks her to fill it with water.

“Where’s your water?” my Los Angeles born and raised daughter asks.

“The sink!” Mom points to the sink, showing more early signs of exasperation. “The water comes out of the faucet in the sink!”

My daughter shoots me a look.

“The sink,” I hiss through clenched teeth. “Use sink water!”

“But, Mom, you said the contaminants in tap water can . . .” she starts.

My child only repeats my wisdom when it will get me in trouble. I divert attention by getting out ingredients I know go in the soup—carrots, onions, and celery—and cheerfully ask, “Where do you keep your vegetable wash, Mom?”

Mom looks at me with lowered eyelids. “My vegetable wash is the water that is currently coming out of the faucet which your daughter is now putting into the pot,” she answers curtly.

I can’t stop myself. “But water alone can’t get rid of pesticide residue, airborne toxins, and microbial—”

“If you already know everything, why did you ask me to teach you how to make soup??” Mom interrupts, her eyes now in a full stern squint. With that, she turns, gets the fresh chicken I bought from the refrigerator, and hands it to my daughter, saying, “Here, honey. You need to remove the chicken from the plastic and rinse it under the faucet, making sure to stick your hand inside the cavity and remove the little pouch of organs and neck bones.”

“I’M NOT STICKING MY HAND INSIDE ANY CAVITIES ARE YOU OUT OF YOUR MIND GRANDMA AND ALSO I AM NEVER TOUCHING ANY ORGANS OR NECKS! EVER!” my little city girl shrieks.

“Maybe you should show us how to rinse the chicken this one time, Mom,” I offer.

The chicken finally makes it into the pot. Mom tosses in seasonings while I try to calculate how much flies from her hand into the water.

“How much was that, Mom?”

“I don’t know. Just toss in what it needs.”

“How do we know how much what it needs?”

“You just know!”

I move on to something measurable, like how many wrong things I can do while I try to cut up the vegetables.

“No! This is the knife for onions,” Mom says, correcting me.

“No! This is the plate for the pieces.” Mom corrects me again.

“No! The plate should be on this side of the stove . . .”

I turn it on my daughter.

“No! This is the way to peel a carrot!” I snap at her.

“No! This is how big to make the pieces!” I snap again.

“No! The scraps should go there! . . . ”

Before long, every helpful suggestion is taken as a judgment. Every comment received as a critique. The daughters get defensive, the moms get frustrated. Perceived disapproval turns into real disapproval. Within minutes the three of us put salmonella to shame in terms of how quickly and completely we’re poisoning the happy, healthy attitude that used to be in the room.

“Why are you getting snippy? I’m just trying to help!”

“Why are you attacking everything I do?”

“What attack? I just mentioned you should use the cutting board, not the counter!”

“Exactly!”

Before long, Mom doesn’t need to correct, I don’t need to snap, and my daughter doesn’t need to grumble. It’s all done with a glance, a gesture, a sigh. The secret sign language of women—so powerful when we’re not directing it at one another, so devastating when we are. In minutes we’ve gone from being glad to be together to silent irritations flying around the room like Mom’s seasonings. No calculations necessary. No need to taste the pot. It was way too much before anyone started. Even completely silent. Everything that isn’t being said sounds like “The way you’re doing it is wrong.”

“What, Mom?? What now??”

“I didn’t say anything!”

“You thought it. I heard you think it!”

With mothers and daughters, what’s going on in the room is never simply what’s going on in the room. One word can call up a whole history of grievances—an incident from childhood, unspoken slights, ancient aggravations. Decades of motherly guidance that got translated by the daughter brain as criticism and rejection. I’m not good enough, I’ll never be good enough. One sigh can summon up all the old baggage. Even in my happy family, and I didn’t even think we had baggage. But one look from Mom, no matter how 100 percent devoted she’s been my whole life, registers as some kind of scolding. For some reason, it’s always worse in the kitchen when we’re cooking. Is it being near food that brings out so much tension? Because the umbilical cord is located so close to the stomach? All I know is, when my mother flips on the under-cabinet light a little too abruptly, as she just did so I can see what I’m chopping, I feel attacked.

“I don’t need the light, Mom.”

“You can’t see what you’re doing without the light.”

“Yes, I can. I don’t need the light on.”

“I like to have the light on when I chop things.”

“I don’t! I like to chop in the complete dark!”

What is wrong with me? Why couldn’t “Thanks, Mom. That really helps!” be the first thing I say? Do I really need to win the moment by turning off the light my ninety-year-old mother wants me to use??

No time to figure that out. Mom has expressed her frustration by snapping the kitchen fan on right over my head, which makes me insane. I pick up the parsley my daughter’s cutting all wrong and demonstrate how to do it, which makes her insane. Mom picks up the parsley I’m cutting wrong and demonstrates her way of doing it, which makes me insane. The circle of life played out on a cutting board in a tiny kitchen in Florida.

Not now, I think. Not when our time left is so short. Not when these days are so precious. This is my big chance to not only have this special time with the two of them but model for my daughter how to lovingly receive guidance from Mom, be an example of the respect I hope my child will have for me when I’m older. It’s all right here for me to give and take. But I do it anyway. Stay stuck in the middle. I am the worst of both—I’m the bad daughter and the bad mother. I overreact to what Mom says to me and turn around and say the exact same things to my child. I revert to being five years old. Stubborn, defiant, reactionary. So irritated with myself I could scream.

The soup has to simmer for a long time. While it’s cooking, my daughter and I go to different rooms to regroup. She needs time with her phone. I need a time-out. The smell of the soup fills the entire house. After a while, I hear some of the family return, descend on the refrigerator, and start pulling out ingredients for their microwaved vegan burgers, fried sausages, kale smoothies, and low-carb hummus tortillas. Their happy chatter in the middle of such disparate food plans makes me feel even worse. I go over and over what happened between Mom, my daughter, and me, trying to think how to redeem this day, when I hear Mom’s voice coming from the kitchen . . .

“No, honey, this is the bowl for salads,” she’s saying to one of my sisters.

“Here, this is a better potholder for that pan,” Mom says to my other sister.

“Here, let’s turn on the light. You can’t see what you’re doing without the light on.”

I stop searching within and pay attention to what’s happening in the other room. Mom’s saying the same things she said to me, but her words now don’t sound judgmental at all. I hear my sisters start to tense up, even get a little on edge with their own daughters just like I did. I happily note how immaturely they respond. I move to the kitchen doorway so I can enjoy the chain reaction of bad attitude.

“What, Mom? What now?!!” . . .

“I like cooking in complete darkness!!” . . .

The scent of Mom’s soup is overpowering. It fills all the spaces between the people, connects everyone. It’s impossible to breathe it in and not be a little bit intoxicated. Impossible to remember what seemed so annoying a short while ago. Impossible to witness all the irritations flying around the room right now and not think of them as spices tossed in the air—literally, the spices of our family’s life. I take a deep breath of all of it. It smells like Grandma’s house in here. Smells like Mom’s house. It smells like a place where everything is forgiven, everyone belongs. It smells like home.

I watch Mom graciously ride out the family chaos, watch her help everyone put away their alien ingredients and clean up their low-carb messes. Even in the cleanup, I see how all the little gestures and glances that make me so defensive when I’m the recipient are infused with Mom’s love.

Finally, everyone’s dishes are washed, everything’s tucked back into its proper home, and the family heads back outside to the beach. The kitchen is quiet again. I find my daughter and wrench her away from her phone. She and I sit back down at the kitchen table. Mom lifts the lid on the big pot on the stove. A giant waft of comfort, reconnection, and reconciliation fills the air. She ladles out a steaming bowl for each of us. I feel happy and grateful and at peace. I get some spoons from the drawer.

“No, use these spoons!” Mom corrects, getting out some other ones.

Three generations sit back down at the table. Mom smiles. We smile back.

“And that,” my sweet, wise mother says, “is how you make chicken soup.”