Nesting Bowls

by Jon Doughboy

I set the oven to preheat because I want to bake something for my husband who loves me and my cooking equally though he might love my baking most of all (I’m not complaining, I love him but also cooking and baking, too, most of all ((my therapist says this has something to do with my mother being unstable and abusive (((emotionally on both counts, not physically, she never laid a finger on me in anger, I swear, she just called me names ((((not just, no, not just)))) relentlessly, undermining me in a chaotic whirlwind of praise and denigration, one minute I was an angel or a cookie or a strudel and the next I was an idiot, fat, useless, a waste of life))) and when she dumped me at my grandmother’s house and I’d sit for hours watching Grandma Betty concoct old school wholly from scratch culinary wonders like seven layer cake with buttercream and almond croissants oozing marzipan and Linzer tortes with homemade jams, all with her sinewy strong forearms (((I have her forearms, her strength))) in that seafoam green kitchen in Troy, a safe space I latched onto with cooking and baking in particular becoming a coping mechanism (((something along those lines anyway, I don’t remember if Dr. Gorman said coping mechanism, that sort of jargon isn’t really her style ((((not that I’m against jargon, in the right situation it can be beautiful, precise, even elegant: bain-marie, crumb coat, macerate)))) and I quite like Dr. Gorman regardless of the words she uses, it’s her manner I admire, her calm confidence))) and even if baking became a coping mechanism that doesn’t taint those crystalline memories of working the dough with Grandma Betty, my little apprenticeship in the art of kneading and rising and proofing)) and my husband also respects the love I have for baking, how serious I take it, “Zen-like,” he says, “monkish,” because as a teenager he read a lot of D. T. Suzuki and shaved his head and spent hours upon hours on those little round cushions they meditate on ((“zafu,” they’re called, evidently, I just looked it up, and the mats beneath them are “zabuton,” see, more beautiful terminology)) and he thinks baking is my Way, my Path, my beloved mystical man with a sweet tooth) so as the oven is warming up I open the bottom cabinet with my set of mixing bowls (bowls I inherited from Grandma Betty along with her recipes and her forearms) and I open the next cabinet with the sugar and flour (recalling my mother once running her slender, trembling fingers along these very same mixing bowls in Grandma Betty’s house in Troy when she’d tried a new therapy or a new drug and wanted to reclaim her daughter ((was I her daughter at that point, though, being raised by Betty I was more my mother’s sister (((and I’d always wanted a sister, a real sibling to share the burden of having such a mother ((((of loving such a mother, craving her meanness (((((mom, mommy))))) of needing (((((hating, fearing, needing))))) her love)))) a sibling God never granted me but I have a husband who is a lover and a friend and sometimes feels like a son or a father))) and Betty I miss and sometimes I miss the children we never had though I’m not sure what sort of mother I would have been because I have a temper sometimes, I’ll admit)) but mostly I’m well-adjusted, Dr. Gorman says, coping, ever coping) and my husband walks in, startling me, and I drop the bag of flour which bursts on the flour, exploding like so many years, insults, abuses, memories, tears, and I say, I yell in a violent outburst of rage and hate and fear and spit, “look what you made me do you fucking idiot, you fucking stupid, useless idiot, you waste of life, you, you…” and my husband holds me as the oven beeps.

Jon Doughboy is a recovering “literary fiction” writer who now produces “prose entertainments” to pass the time, available for the amusement of none and all @doughboywrites