Life From Scratch Read Online Free PDF Page B

figure out a way to get our households in the same city, or even state. In the end, we gave ourselves up to the little time we had together.
    The cramped kitchen was the only place we could all fit; we’d congregate around the mismatched chairs, elbows on the counters, sometimes sitting cross-legged on milk crates. While the older kids shaped the piecrust and squeezed lemon juice over the apples, Mom handed out scraps of dough and a few slices of apple for Michael and me, allowing us to put whatever we wanted into our “inventions.” Everything was fair game, but I always went straight to Mom’s spice rack, that hodgepodge collection situated on the railroad tie shelf above my clothes dresser. In addition to the spices she used in her pie—nutmeg, allspice, and cinnamon (which mom called “sin”)—I dusted on some hot paprika and a handful of raisins.
    I loved it when we crammed together around that old wooden table. In those days food was never just sustenance; the very act of cooking knit our disparate lives together.
    After the pie was done, Mom plopped the glass dish on the table and shooed us outside for an hour or two. She knew she could never keep us from cutting into it unless we were far enough away that we could no longer sniff that intoxicating whiff of cinnamon and apples.
    When we finally sat down to eat, Mom stuck a candle in the pie’s center and said with a smile: “Happy Birthday, cutie pie!” We all sang to Michael, ate two slices each, and licked our plates until they gleamed. Any leftovers were served for breakfast with a big dollop of vanilla yogurt.
    Even as the dishes were washed, we’d beg Mom to make the pie again. But there was never time. Inevitably Connor, Tim, and Grace had to go back to their dad, three states away. When our visits ended, all of us cried, especially Grace and me. To make the separation easier, she slipped me elaborate, handwritten notes adorned with bubbly hearts and flowers. When I was too little to read them, Mom or Michael helped me, indulging me dozens of times until I knew the words by heart.
    Day after day I shut myself away in my castle bed, staring at the drawings until I could almost see Grace sitting next to me. Without her and her brothers, the house was too still. When the last crumb from our meal was swept up, often Mom disappeared into her room for hours at a time. She said she was napping.

    There’s a difference between poverty of resources and poverty of spirit. For a long time, Michael and I were oblivious to hardship because of Mom’s determined efforts. But in the end she couldn’t erase the reality of our situation. Nowhere was our poverty more apparent than when we went out into the community, which seemed to operate under a constantly shifting set of rules. Even figuring out where we could buy our groceries was to risk humiliation.
    A year after we moved to Jamaica Plain, a new health food store opened two miles from the apartment. When we got the notice in the mail, Mom decided we’d go immediately.
    Mom had tied my babushka on extra tight when we’d left the apartment, tucking my long brown hair into the neck of my woolen poncho. She’d pointed to the trees, whose leaves stood silver against the charcoal sky, and said we needed to hurry; there was rain on the way. But she’d said it with a smile since we were going to make a German Tree Cake.
    Broiling 21 crepe-like layers of batter into a cake, Mom decided, would be the perfect rainy-day activity. She got the recipe from a German woman at a folk dance. Mom made a habit of asking foreigners what they like to eat, pressing them until they shared something she could add to our patchwork of recipes.
    Michael and I wandered into the dry goods section, where I reached into a large barrel.
    “This cereal tastes funny,” I said.
    Michael stood on tiptoe, his corduroys rising a couple of inches above his loafers, and peered inside the barrel. His hair fell into his eyes. Already in second