The Baker

Sally Koslow

Wayne Thiebaud

Word Count 990

In the Fargo, North Dakota, of my childhood, if you wanted a fancy dessert, you had three choices: drive 221 miles north to Winnipeg, 235 miles southeast to Minneapolis, or grease a pan and pre-heat the oven to 350 degrees. My mother regularly turned out pies, angel food cakes, sheet cakes crowned with broiled coconut, Passover sponge cakes that required nine eggs and potato starch, brownies, blueberry muffins, and sustaining our family through the 1970’s, her signature Bundt cake featuring instant pudding, vodka and Galliano liqueur. When I went off to college, Mom shipped me butterscotch oatmeal cookies in coffee cans. I suspect my boyfriend stuck around as much for the cookies as me.

My mother never considered her baking special, so neither did I. In a tsunami of self-regard, I spent my adolescence longing for a different kind of mom, not someone who crashed with a four-day migraine at the first rumble of stress, but a wise yet elegant pal who could butter my ego and impart secrets on how to be irresistible to boys. What I got was a sensible, polite student of American history and life member of Hadassah in anklets and orthopedic wedges whose hair-flair flatlined at pin curls. Of the Tonette Home Permanent I received at her hand in fourth grade, I will say only that afterwards I in no way resembled the blonde on the box, and that my Sunday School teacher later confessed that she wanted to cry when frizzy me walked into her classroom the next morning. Moreover, I am convinced my mother’s attempt turned my hair curly for the rest of my life.

My yearning for a storybook mother-daughter relationship continued into the time I became a mother and wife myself and witnessed close up what I saw as an idyllic relationship between my mother-in-law and her two daughters. They spent a lot of time together shopping, laughing, and playing golf and bridge. Had I received one percent of the praise those two got from their mom-- thought, I grudgingly--I would have developed the confidence required to run for President.

Then, abruptly, my fantasy imploded. At this point I lived in Manhattan, where my parents made a yearly pilgrimage to see me and my family. On one visit, I took my mother to a concert at the Metropolitan Museum. Throughout the evening, she insisted she was at the University of Minnesota, where she’d gone to college. She was also certain she saw many friends from Fargo in the audience. Although Mom was barely sixty, I didn’t need a diagnosis of dementia–that came the next year–to guess what was happening.

I realized this was the beginning of the end. In the weeks that followed, I couldn’t staunch my tears. Much of the weeping was for my mother’s tragedy. But to be honest, many tears were for me. The mom’s-my-best-friend bond I dreamed of, measured by the high standards of my imagination, was never going to happen.

My mother’s dementia progressed. When we visited the memory care facility--decorated with residents’ childlike artwork-- to which she moved, my husband and I tried to penetrate the maximum-security prison that is dementia. Mom never lost her good manners and she always smiled at us, but she gave no indication of knowing that the male visitor was her son-in-law and the woman, not a random nurse, but Sally, her daughter.

One afternoon, my husband asked, “Do you remember the recipe for those cookies you sent Sally at college?”

For a few seconds, the wires connected. “I forgot that recipe a long time ago,” my mom joked.

It was the last coherent sentence I ever heard her utter.

Two years after my mother’s death, I had a dream. We were preparing Thanksgiving dinner and for dessert, she’d baked pumpkin pie. “Plain whipped cream has no flavor,” she pointed out. “You have to add vanilla and confectioners’ sugar.” As she showed me the amounts, her voice, with its Marge cadence, was happy and her demeanor, alive. The dream was of profound comfort, both hello and good-bye.

Now, when a friend has a dinner party, I’m the one who volunteers to bring dessert. As I bake, I hear my mother’s accent that I left in Fargo. “Refrigerate the dough.” “Don’t make a crust if the kitchen’s muggy.” “Take the eggs out early to get to room temperature.” “Measure accurately–baking depends on chemical reactions.”

Today, I’m making the matzo kugel she served at every Seder. I carefully follow the recipe she gave me, written in her pretty, Palmer-method penmanship. “Put in a large, well-greased casserole and cover tightly.” “Serve immediately so it doesn’t fall.”

I had to learn on my own how to dress and flirt and wear my hair (the latter being a lifelong challenge.) For these skills I discovered there was a source better than mothers: magazines geared to teenagers and women, with which I connected so fundamentally that I went on to have a long, satisfying run as an editor on several. But what I wouldn’t give to have my mother by my side in the kitchen, hearing her mock Donald Trump; wondering why the television needs hundreds of channels, several remotes and “streaming,” or asking what it was like to visit the private quarters of the White House, since she’s the only person in my life who would appreciate a play-by-play of this particular professional perq. “Well, a very intimidating lady lived there,” I might begin. “Her name was Barbara Bush. She scared the hell out of every editor she invited to lunch, even the ones who were pretty scary themselves…”

Fate gave me two sons. This, too, was a lucky break. If I’d had daughters, I’m sure I would have failed to live up to their expectations, perhaps by trying too hard to be a buddy. Thanks to my mother, however, I can bake.

Sally is the author of seven books translated into fourteen languages. The Real Mrs. Tobias, her next novel, has just been released by Harper Collins, which also published Another Side of Paradise, a biographical novel about F. Scott Fitzgerald’s turbulent love affair with Sheilah Graham, a Gatsby-esque gossip columnist. The former editor-in-chief of McCall’s and other major consumer magazines, Sally has contributed essays to magazines, newspapers, anthologies, and websites, including The New York Times, Oxford University Press, Real Simple, O the Oprah Magazine, and many others. She’s spoken at the F. Scott Fitzgerald Society in France and at numerous colleges, libraries, women’s clubs, synagogues, book clubs, and Generation Women and has taught creative writing privately and at The Writing Institute of Sarah Lawrence College. Sally lives in Manhattan, but hopes the statute of limitations never ends on bragging that she’s from Fargo, North Dakota. www.sallykoslow.com,