Crying in the Cornbread

An Olfactory Sensation(Devastation) of My Mother Being Utterly Gone

I am choosing Lou reed to guide me on this obnoxiously bright screen. I’ll twirl and scream and twirl once more. That’s the type of thing I do when I have a few moments to myself. Midweek at a diverbar, where one seeks to desperately, yet crucially commit to shootin’ the shit.

So let’s give it a go. Iv’e come to learn from trial and error: You either confront the darkness in creative solitude, or set the intention to delightfully disassociate amidst low-risk shenanigans. Karaoke will be the vice of choice.

If I do not choose to be cozily introspective, I must not overlook the chance for an affordable buzz and human connection. Otherwise, without either intention of social or solitude at this point in the grief, I will buffer. 

And buffering, in my opinion, is the worst possible space to be in for this whole first-time-around Holiday szn of losing a parent.

Historically (as in since August when I practiced saying my mom is dead) I naturally chose the path of “dead and death” for more directness, paying sacred homeage to my own jounrney.

Fast forward to now the tone of my experience, edging on month 4, feels much more tenderhearted, where a frankness in my recounts, especially in the depths of autumn, feel harsh, insincere to my currently vulnerable ass soul.

So, here I am, having weathered a whole grown-up semester of being on the same planet as before, but without my mom. She unexpectedly died on August 1st. \okay\, i figured this would at least cut any type of presumptuous metaphor of her not in my life as a symbol or something;

No. I began seeing my therapist in 2018, that era of processing a parent relationship in metaphorical death had its time. That era has come and gone. Just like my mom. My mom really is dead and so I will continue the meandering with a bit more context, hazily arriving to the punchline as to why the fuck i sobbed while eating a singular piece of cornbread.

My neuron map went a blinkin’ post-bar enjoyment. In retrospect, the blinky brain transpired before the bar. Upon arrival of my own home post carpool duty, the scent of something extremely familiar hit me as my front door lached back into place.

I felt an alluring aura while simultaneously vast in confusion.What Is tHAaattttt?

Shoes off, i come up the steps to see my flatmate prepping for her own night out. A chilli cookoff amidst an adjacent circle of pals. Ugh, i love wholesome autumn events. Anyway, the home was not smelling like chilli. To be so foreal, I first took note of the incense. Rishikesh Ashram meets ceremonial cinnamon elixir? Church when the kids would pass out,hitting the pews and all that frankincense swirled around as the adults were front and center on the jesus stage?

Familiarity is all that was beeping off in my body. Our home is much more of a clean antrhopolic plant wooden space… Not really incense, so I’m trying to use my little nose to smell past it.

But what in the world was it? Is it a meal? is THIS a type of cuisine, breaking my heart? And why am I acting like things aren’t cooked on a regular basis around these parts?

Sharing a space with a slavic human means two things: no bullshit communication and deliciously nourishing food. These two things made it very clear that yes, cornbread was being baked and yes, of course I get to have a piece! You think they aren’t going to share with me or only offer in fake reciprocity? Nah. Ancestry in reverence to Allah. That’s double trouble: anyone they are in space sharing with will be fed and loved on. That’s just how the cornbread crumblessss

OKAY BACK TO THE GOD FORSAKEN CORNBREAD. I am so locked in on a wednesday early evening, sipping on my sour beer with zero sustenance in my stomach other than a handful of takis from watching a half hour of screentime; being the final scenes of K-pop Demon Hunters with a 7 year old, and my oh my, was the premise of the film actually quite moving? 

I simply cannot believe myself for denying a different 7 year old in a cozy Brooklyn downtime moment, a chance of watching even a sliver of such a film together. I called it, without seeing it, not my type of thing and got her to get back on my skateboard. Hazel, if you are reading this, I am sorry. Jinu and Rumi really ~do be ~ growing their character through the lesson of compromise and integrity. 

YEAH ALRIGHT. So. I won’t even name the food item again.

Just please know, my mother routinely made this. I’d help. It was sorta our Holiday thing.

 It’s November. Which means December. Which almost means almost February, a time we shared the same birthday week our entire lives, with all the family gatherings and such prior. A timeline I am about to journey through as motherless. Yikes, my dudes, yikes.

Bringing your awareness back to my pre-game of beer and a singular piece of cornbread, with me not even realizing this was the smell making me feel things. However; the emotions were conjured, just not out in public.

I sang karaoke with a ferocious heart, walking ten minutes with two dear friends to another bar for food. We eat. We talk of cool intellectual whacky banter because, why would I be out in the first place? Remember. That type of genuine connection or introspection or bust. No buffer.

The overpriced fried food is hitting delectably at this point. Oh good, something else in my 3 beers belly other than the delicious, but very non-meal quantity of the Cornbread I so have yet to discover is a portal to my deeper grief.

 I come home, very much satisfied with an evening out. I take off my clothes. Do all the things one does to prepare for bed and a Thursday morning of in-person talk therapy followed by in-person carpool-library mozie-play pretend siberian tigers lost in a snowstorm toddler pre-bathtime extravaganza.

I also catch myself now making my way to the kitchen.

The purse next to the piece of you-know-what timestamp: 12:03 AM.

My slightly drunken leetle fingertips open the glass container. I grab yet another piece of cornbread. In this primal way. Not afraid of my roommate perceiving my actions greedy, but in this way of, '“I cannot stop gravitating toward this cornbread, even once I am full”

Is she trying to tell me something? She as in the cor…whatever.

I sit on the edge of the bed. I take my first bite. I felt quite satiated from the bar food. But something was telling me to go ahead, it’s okay,  to have another. To have this moment.

 I take a bite. The aroma of cooked corn meal, the very ingredient i’d shamelessly eat with a spoon from the chesnut cabinets i’d crawl up upon, became locked in through my slowing down brain, tastebuds and heart space. 

Oh fuck. 

The house this entire time smelled like THIS which smells like MOM which feels like HOME and the illusion of availability and perceived permanence of having what you’ve always known as a small child and an adult child; no matter how tattered or ruptured or distant the relationship itself found its way into, ALL of this. A parent of you.  No Longer.

My throat wells up. I continue to nourish myself with my roommate’s delicious leftover chilli cookoff offering. And simultaneously, my little self nourishes my brain with what feels like holidays and family and the ever shifting animacy of home. Of the early 2000’s. With the sunset lighting and the microwave clock being the only object to remind us of time and a yard full of neighbor kids and scraped knees and Spice Girl posters and marshmallows near the fire on an actual dirty outside stick that has never seen an Amazon truck in its life and all this other nostalgic shit that my giant family of rambunctious characters WREAKS of.

Just as seasons pass, an aching for “how things used to be” 2 years, 12 years, 20 years ago – is now accompanied with a physical person who I don’t get to bitch about nor be witnessed as I grow into my wiser self while uncovering that universally charming and humbling plot— the plot of going back to your mother for advice you promised you’d never ask for. On fertility. On the recipes. On the written-in-stone themes of joining in both the demise and delight of being 37 or 43 or 51, having my own mother as a grandmother for my own future babies, a grandmother I never experienced for myself. I don’t have this and I will never get to live through any of these things. 

I sit in the edge of my bed, the chain of my mother’s red purse cold up against my naked thigh. continuously welcoming the tears, a mouthful of recognizable carbs and an empty feeling consuming my motherless vessel cements me to this moment. I smile so big knowing this all belongs to me. This type of grief, warm in my home after a night out with friends, safe amidst my own bedroom I’ve planned to have as a container to grief in.

After an entire year of backpacking solo across continents and couches, this container feels more sacred than ever. My journals and books and oracle cards so near to accompany me in making sense of my own story. I get to have all of these things. I swallow once more. 

 I go to bed.

It’s dark out here, the guttural reminder of losing someone forever; ever present in the all consuming crashing waves and ebbing flows, anticipating the next swell. Unexpected tears singing tones of rage, helplessness, gratitude, self-pity, regret and relief. The first holidays, they say, is a rough one.

Well Hey.

At least there’s cornbread.