MY ACCOUNT

March 1

Hi mum,
 

I don’t quite know how it’s already March. There’s still a lot of snow and frost here, as is typical in New England for March, but I swear I can already see some buds forming on the tips of some of the tree branches. This time of year, I always start to watch for the magnolia buds and the orange blossoms.

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They don’t really come out fully until May, but as soon as March 1st hits, I feel the promise of spring and the beautiful, sweet smell of the magnolia bushes in bloom. I can’t quite describe the aroma, but to me it smells like a very delicate jasmine mixed with succulently sweet and tangy pineapple.

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And the orange blossoms! They’re quite a floral bloom, but somehow, they have a delicate wood-like aroma, too. It smells like when you’re finishing an orange popsicle, and the flavor of the wooden stick mingles with the sticky sweet syrup of the orange ice. Naturally, there aren’t a lot of orange trees here, but there’s one yard on my way to work that has one, and I start walking a little bit slower past that spot whenever winter starts to thaw. It feels like the reminder of a fresh start around the corner. And this year brings a different kind of fresh start. A couple, I guess.

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Nora has decided that she’ll move in October, and she’s already lined up her place and work in Hawaii. I suspect these next several months will fly by in the blink of an eye, much like her baby and toddler years did.

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By the way, Nora took that extra sheet of shortbread (obviously – who else would it have been?), packed in my cookie tins. I think she’s been taking them to school to share with her friends, as she used to do with the craft projects we made together.

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When I was little, you and I used to whip up mad kitchen experiments for fun, trying to figure out new and outrageous menu items, like frozen lime foam, or those chip-chunk chocolates which were far too addictive to be allowed to exist, I think. But, really, sweet and salty belong together, and nothing works better in that flavor combo than salty potato chips and sweet milk chocolate.

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But because I’d stopped baking, and also because of my work hours and being a single mother, cooking at home when Nora was growing up was purely functional.

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When she was 5 years old and in junior kindergarten, their class did a fun sensory play day with soaps and shaving cream. Nora had so much fun, she just couldn’t stop talking about it, asking if we could do stuff like that at home. I wanted us to be able to have fun and be creative at home together too, so I researched and found different things we could make together, like pinecone birdfeeders, pot-pourri sachets, macrame scarves… But it wasn’t until I found things like homemade bubble bath, and bath playdough, and fizzing powder, that I could see she was completely enthralled.

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By that time she was around 13 years old and we had made perfumes, body wash, lotions, face masks, candles, and more. We had more smell good body products than we knew what to do with, so she started taking some to school to share with her friends, or having them over for little at-home spa nights when I was working evening shifts.

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Nora’s talent in this realm amazes me; she has an intuition with ingredients and their function in products, their chemistry. For the last several years she’s been wanting to learn how to make the more advanced types of soap and distillation essences from scratch. She’s especially interested in the local, nature-sourced materials that are found and used in Hawaii, so she’s set herself up to work with a lady named Leigh in her workshop, where she creates handcrafted products, and in the evenings, Nora will apprentice with her to learn more about traditional and cultural methods of formulation and herbalism for body care.

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I’ve loved seeing Nora grow, seeing her discover her talents, soaking up any information she can get, and watching her plan how to advance. And I’ve loved the aromatic side of her work. I used to think food was memories, but I think it’s more accurate to say that aromas are memories. Smells can catapult us back in time to a specific moment or feeling or emotion encapsulated in those connections.

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When I smell burnt sugar, I remember your hugs. It’s not even a specific moment I recall, I just remember the feeling of your apron against my cheek as you’d hold me close, threads of caramelized sugar like ribbons falling from your hair.

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Hmm. I feel like I’m unwrapping layers of myself I didn’t even know I had, as I write to you. It never occurred to me that maybe I stayed away from things like caramelized sugar and baking and kitchen experiments because maybe I didn’t want to remember you. It’s easier to stay mad at you if I don’t remind myself of the good times we had.

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Beatrix