Mother’s Leavetaking

The phone rings. You are alone now.

You go through motions, make arrangements, travel long distances.

Routine feels good. You keep going. Then it registers.

You are alone now.

You buy flour and dig out the cardamom coffee cake recipe.

You start the yeast, you mix in the flour, sugar, salt, butter with only a little bit of cardamom. You feel it grow under your hands as you knead and knead more.

Soon you have a kitchen filled with good smell and loaves of bread to take to the neighbors.

You knock on doors and share the fruits of your doughy labors–twists of cardamom bread dusted with melted butter and sugar.

The magic of yeast, flour, sugar, salt and only a little cardamom keeps you connected.

Without this magic, you are alone and helpless again.

Later you will come to this–the love will always be there. You aren’t really alone.

But for now this is reality. With active yeast and enough flour, you can stay in the world for at least today.

One of the nicknames for the poisonous datura plant is Devil’s Trumpet. Convenient for me as I have the beginnings of a cozy mystery story where someone kills off an obnoxious jazz trumpet player with the seeds of this beautiful but deadly plant.

The story exists in a zero draft that dropped itself onto my computer keyboard last time I took the NaNoWriMo (National November Writing Month) challenge. I call it a zero draft because it exists in a form probably undecipherable to anyone else. For me, it was the gift of the story about a confused poet-turned-sleuth who bumbles upon this mystery by accident and then feels compelled to solve it. It was fun to watch the plot reveal itself to me during that November writing marathon.

Next step–an outline. Yes, I previously considered myself a confirmed Pantser. I am now a convert to the Doctrine of the Outliners.

Stay tuned.

In New Mexico, September is Green Chile Time. We prepare for the coming cold months by packing our freezers with bags of the roasted green chiles. The smell of the roasting chiles is almost as good as eating them. I think it is the reason I will never move away from this state. I need that aroma in September.

The best way to get your supply of green chiles is to find a farm that has picked and roasted them that day. According to all that is holy to chile lovers, this is the only way to get the most authentic flavor when you thaw and eat the bounty of freezer, one bag at a time, after growing season.

This past year we moved away from the farms we used to drive out to every fall. I searched, sampled, sought advice and we finally bought our bushel of roasted greens from Fred of Socorro, just off St. Michael’s Drive in Santa Fe. Fred swore the chile was picked just the day before and he looked like he knew how to roast it. We came home with our bag of hot, just roasted chiles and went to work on dividing them up into quart baggies for the freezer.

Our car still smells like chile, and the ice frozen in close proximity to it will have that slight tinge of chile flavor for the next week or so. We are ready for winter.