A Crowning Jewel

It was Dad who taught me to cook.

I admit, I was resistant at first. I didn’t want the responsibility, the dishes, the chore of
cooking. But Dad changed that. He showed me (through years and years of example) the wonder food could hold, the light that could appear in someone’s eye when they took the first bite and knew a new meaning of love.

That’s what Dad taught me most. Food was love. Food was the most primeval need, the
one thing each human craved—the need to be nourished. And for Dad, it wasn’t enough to check a box and move on. What nourished the body had to extend further than that, or what use was it? No, for Dad, food had to nourish the soul as well. It had to be shared. It had to be taken to neighbors with a Christmas hymn and an offering of “I love you” dusted with powdered sugar and secured neatly with cling film. For such was the recipe he made sure his kids would carry on as his legacy, his crowning jewel.

When Dad gathered us together to make that first apfelstrudel, I was probably too young
for memories. But the first time I was cognizant of the act, Dad’s hands were under mine, his
warmth guiding me, showing me how to stretch the pastry thin as a sheet without poking tiny
finger-shaped holes in the dough. And he stayed like that, helping me one hand at a time until the dough filled the entirety of our dining table. Then, as we sprinkled the sugar and raisins across tart apple slices, I remember my sibling’s voices ringing out like laughter. I imagined it a crucial ingredient; a strudel without laughter might as well be baked cardboard with icing sugar.

The last part of the assembly was always the best. Kids lined up along the end of the table
and took hold of the sheet we’d stretched the dough onto. Then, slowly and steadily, we lifted up and watched the edge of the strudel curl and fall in on top of itself, rolling faster with every second until what was left of the pastry was a giant snake of sugary dough and apples. We
helped Dad spiral the snake onto a sheet pan—somehow it always fit.

The kitchen smelled heavenly as the strudel was sent into the oven. There was something
magic about watching at the oven door, the smells of cinnamon and nutmeg, apple and dark
nuttiness of molasses sugar rushing over you. It was like seeing through a chrysalis and
understanding for the very first time the wonder that turned a caterpillar into a butterfly. But that was the way with apple strudel. It was magic.

The last thing for us children to do was run for our coats and boots. Mom would help
bundle us up, bracing us against the chill of December air. And, with plates of strudel warming our fingertips, we were off to tour the neighborhood, awaiting the moment when our neighbors’ eyes would alight with that first bite and they would know a new meaning of love. That’s what Dad taught me most. Food was love. It was the most primeval need, the one
thing each human craved. And it wasn’t enough to check a box and move on.

* * *

It was February, and my roommates and I had just come back from the thrift store. They each
reluctantly headed back to their rooms, to the homework they’d left undone. I lingered in the
living room and curled up on the couch, the warmth of fresh tears rolling down my cheeks and nose as I clutched a plastic bag containing two new pairs of jeans to my chest. The sizes on the tags screamed at me. I had starved three more inches off of my body, and I cursed myself that the solution to drowning in the jeans I already owned was not to correct a rapidly developing eating disorder, but to simply buy smaller jeans.

How did I let it get this bad? I thought Dad said food was love...?

The questions raged through me as I cried myself through the dinner hour. Out of fear, I
force-fed myself half a bowl of leftover spaghetti, overcome with the powerlessness I felt against my own thoughts. My mind told me to hate my body, and I did—not because it made sense but because I was filled with the shame and guilt of sideways looks and whispered comments as I walked down a school hallway, filled with tainted memories of images where I am more stomach than child sitting on Santa’s lap. Filled with the glaring lights of crowded changing stalls where every eye was trained on my thighs and where every whisper said we’d have to size up and couldn’t I just lose some weight.

And what then of most primeval need, the one thing each human craved—the need to be
nourished? Was nourishment the same as thing food? And if there was a check box, was it even worth checking off?

And how could anyone love me if I had food? If that’s what brought the double digits I
wore around my hips, if it brought the thunder thighs, the bulging cheeks, the double chin? The double chin. A double chin!

Certainly this was not love.

* * *

I was twenty-two when I delivered my first wedding cake, frightfully aware of the
walking contradiction I was—a baker who struggled to feed herself.
I’d spent hours in the kitchen with flour and sugar dusting more of the counter than my
mixing bowl. I learned not to breathe when placing the gold leaf on the frosting—that is if I
didn’t want it to get blown away in the air and dissolve into nothingness next to my AC vent.

The result was a three-tiered elegance with eucalyptus and carefully wrapped baby’s
breath so that no part of the stems would touch anything edible. Because as much of a piece of art the cake was, it was going to be eaten.

When I was done setting up, I looked for the bride—my best friend of twelve years who
had finally found love and who I couldn’t be happier for. She was radiant and glowing, and I
thanked her that on such an important day, she would trust me with the cake. Something some would argue is the centerpiece of a wedding. The crowning jewel.

I took a video of them as they cut the first slice. I wanted to remember every moment of
this tradition, of them beginning their life together. Like any self-respecting bride, she smeared the frosting all down her new husband’s face. He daintily dobbed her nose.
Crumbs dripping from both of them, they laughed and kissed and directed their guests to
the dessert table where I was already laying out slices of that same cake for the rest of the crowd to enjoy.

I shared half a slice with my husband, who had arrived as soon as he could after work,
and from the back corner of the reception hall, I thought about unity, about how two people can become one family, about how hard I’d worked and how the two things tying everyone in that room together were love and cake. And for the first time in years—in this moment of reclaiming what was once lost to me—I started to believe Dad again.

Dad said Food was love.

I looked around me—the lights, the music, the dancing—wasn’t this the beginning of
love? Wasn’t a wedding a good a place as any to start to love myself again?