A Pocket Archive (41)

The smell of almond extract and chocolate filled the kitchen as I sat, sipping my coffee over my journal. I'd come to love Sunday mornings for the few hours of solitude it gave me. I'd usually get up first so I could take my coffee on the balcony with the cats and enjoy the sunrise before the rest of the world was stirring, then I'd often bake something or make breakfast before video calling mom and my gabby girl.  I rarely went to church on weekends, but spent the morning reflecting or reading instead, enjoying the little time I had to myself. It was nice not to be alone, but I found that I still needed space to recharge and process my thoughts in solitude so I didn't burn out. Mentally, I get tired rather easily.

A bell chimed on the stove and I grabbed and oven mit and pulled out the brownies, stabbing the center with a chopstick to see if they were ready. Satisfied, I put the pan aside and returned to my coffee. I'd made them in a round pan, since it was all I had, and it reminded me of the cakes mom would make every year on my dad's birthday.

For a while, it wasn't uncommon for us to have dozens of boxes of cake mix in the pantry, I think because they were cheap and didn't spoil, much like the pasta, saltines, and Jell-O that were unfortunate stables of part of my childhood. For dad's birthday, however, mom wouldn't touch a box mix. The last week of February always meant a trip to the grocery store for parchment paper, bars of rich bakers chocolate, two bags of unsweetened coconut flakes, a can of sweetend condensed milk, a box of butter, and an extra carton of eggs. She'd usually spend a full day working on the cake, and we had to be careful not to run in the house or shout, because it could make the cakes fall in the oven. Now I wonder if it was secretly a ploy to make us be quiet for a few hours, but I'm not certain.

The cake called for several eggs and had no leaving agents, so it had to be mixed very carefully, and I do remember a few times when she'd pull them out of the oven and they had sunk in the middle instead of remaining moist and fluffy. As the more jubilant ( aka loud ) kid in the family, I remember crying and when I was very small, thinking I'd ruined my dad's birthday for running down the hallway when I'd forgotten. Fortunately, there was always plenty of extra frosting to fill the gaps, and it still looked pretty on the plate- a very specific one with orange and yellow flowers on it that we only used for his birthday, after an old lady at the church in Jackson had made him a cake for his birthday and sent it home with us.

It's funny, the things you learn in life, like how you need to be quiet and tiptoe around things if you want them to turn out right. Sometimes you internalize it to the point you learn to walk on eggshells, until it eventially becomes an internal mantra, so much so that when things happen, even if you know it has nothing to do with you, you automatically feel it's still somehow your fault.

I smiled bitterly. I'd finally fully pulled myself free from that unhealthy frame of thinking, and fortunately, baking had very little do to with life. I'd never been very good at being quiet, but recently I'd found that more often than not, it proved to be a good thing.

I helped myself to a brownie (the dash of cinnamon had been a good choice) and glanced over the page in front of me. Typed, it would probably be pretty close, but I might still have some wiggle room. The few dozen small-town newspapers I'd bookmarked had submission limits set between 200-400 words, so would probably have to tweak it a little, but it looked about the right length for most of them.

As much as I loved quiet, it's not what I was made for. I finished my coffee and shoved the last bite of brownie into my mouth, then stood, stretched, and went to find my laptop.

It was time to let my talents shine.