Warmth and High Cholesterol

I pitched up (aka attended), two kids in tow, with a sweet, strawberry jam roll with unrefined sugar on top.  I'd made it three times because I hadn't yet figured out centigrade or my oven or the high altitude.  I'd made it three times because the first wasn't "pretty" enough and the second had caramelized jam making the edges sticky.  I'd made it three times because I was scared and this dish was my safety blanket, my soothing balm, my excuse for being an outsider.  It smelled of warmth and high cholesterol, therapy and desperation.

That was then...

I was baking with the older two kids earlier.  I needed something to be right in the world and the kitchen was the surest place to find it.  As Em was mixing in the cinnamon and allspice to our oatmeal cookies she looked up at me and commented that the mixture smelled like home, smelled like South Africa.  I agreed.  I usually had a pot simmering on the stove with cinnamon sticks, allspice, and cloves.  Then, in all the seriousness a 5-year old with the soul of a 76 year-old former Hollywood starlet can muster, she said, "Mommy, our home in South Africa was wonderful because you made it lovely."  I asked her what she meant by that and her response made my knees buckle.  "I mean that you always made the home smell lovely, you made the things inside lovely and we had lovely friends in South Africa."

Over the years, I've done food for friends... a lot of friends.  I've baked for gatherings and teas, birthday parties and backyard braais.  I've cooked for new babies, family losses, and no reason at all other than it's a Tuesday and no one wants to make dinner on a Tuesday.  Food is my default language.  It's my offering of peace or friendship or ignorance or assistance and my way to scream at disparity or discomfort or loss.  It's my Song of the South and my language of love.  It's my poetry that says that life, like food, is meant to be full-bodied, decadent, savored, enjoyed and gulped down so that you can shove more in before you get too full and have to stop.

This is now...

So I walked that strawberry jam roll into the group of women that I barely remembered from the previous meeting, praying that it would be accepted as the peace offering it was.  Because I needed those women to like me.  I needed them to be my friends.  I needed reassurance that being an outsider was okay as long as they liked my food, because then something would still make sense.  Something like food or friendship or familiarity.