"Three Tablespoons" (StoryADay Challenge/Day 15)

THE PROMPT: (by Art Taylor, who  is the author of the story collection The Boy Detective & The Summer of ’74 and Other Tales of Suspense, and the novel in stories On the Road with Del & Louise, winner of the Agatha Award for Best First Novel.

Each week, Postsecret.com publishes postcards from people sharing their own secrets, anonymously and creatively.

Let your imagination wander about these secrets, about the wider world of these “characters” and their situations. Write a short story in which their secrets (the hiding of them? the revealing of them?) put a plot in motion.

*

Journal Entry:

03 April 1986

Only with hindsight can one really begin to unpack much of the pain and damage already done. I once read or seen somewhere that all parents screw their children up a bit. Maybe it’s true. Maybe it’s not. All family dynamics are uniquely individual. And never would I adhere to a blanket statement. But I must admit, I always found it amusing. Perhaps, I’m a believer in that statement personally. As I’ve matured and had my own experiences, things can begin to become quite clear. This is not me dissecting the matriarch that is Agatha Ephron. This is me dissecting the relationship of a mother and daughter. 

Of all the things I wanted in a mother, Agatha provided most of them. All the physical needs were met with grace. In the eyes of a younger version of myself, it seemed like she really had this mother-thing figured out well. My younger brother Donald and I had a pretty damn good childhood. Agatha was nurturing. During the holidays she would prepare mouth-watering banquets for the family. She even taught me how to make Grandma’s top-secret pumpkin pie. The secret was three tablespoons of raw honey and nutmeg. I would have never guessed. It was always better than I could have imagined. Agatha loved to host family and friends. She always wanted to display her cooking and decorative prowess, especially to other couples in the neighborhood. I was beginning to notice the posturing. At the end of these celebrations, she loved to send the stuffed-guests home with styrofoam trays of more food. She couldn’t stand the sight of leftovers. Agatha was formidable. 

After Bruce had an affair with our pediatrician, I don’t think Agatha ever truly recovered from it. The false image of the perfect family seemed to be disintegrating before her eyes. Within a few months, the divorce was final and Bruce moved out. Donald and I saw him every other weekend. It put a strain on us the most. The children are the ones who suffer the most in a divorce.

After I moved out at nineteen, our relationship took another shift. I guess she felt like I was her baby chick leaving the nest before I actually knew how to fly. And looking back, she was partially right. But I have no regrets about my decision. We started to disagree on things. I was discovering my own voice and personality that wasn’t a carbon copy of who she was. Agatha wanted me to be more like her and less like myself. She wanted me to be “more proper,” she liked to say. Not knowing that every time she said that she stabbed into my self-esteem. Emotional scars hurt more than physical ones. 

A distance the size of Lake Michigan grew between us. Agatha wanted to throw Donald a surprise thirtieth birthday party, but only after she discovered I was pondering taking him on a solo sibling vacation. Donald was always a mama’s boy. She felt like we were moving beyond her. She didn’t want to lose the pulse of her children.

It’s often believed that all jokes contain elements of truth. The joke delivery lightens the blunt force of said truth. And if it’s not received well, one can always resort to, I was joking. I remember Agatha invited me over for tea after work. I declined. But we spoke on the phone that night. I was expressing how much pressure I was under at work and how I felt mentally exhausted and overwhelmed. I shared with her some of my own mental health struggles that I never told her about. In typical Agatha fashion, she changed the subject to something more lighter and bouncier. Constant refusal of the truth will only ruin the one in denial. I quietly wept as I thought of the eventual implosion of my own mother. 

Ultimately, I’ve learned that family doesn’t always feel like family. And as sad as that truth may be to swallow, maybe that’s just how it is. Some relationships can be repaired with work. Others can’t. Some don’t need to be.  For years I felt like I was angry with Agatha. But now I can see her for who she was. She was a young mother doing the best she could. She was the mother of a daughter who developed her own ideals. A young woman who was itching to shatter the bird box Agatha wanted her to live in respectively. Birds can’t fly in a cage. And just because you disagree with someone on a variety of things doesn’t mean you’re void of love for that person. There will always be love, even in all the discomfort. I’ll always cherish the three tablespoons she taught me.

The End

**This is a work of fiction. Names. characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

PostSecret: 

“I Called My Mom To Tell Her I Really Need Help.

We Talked About Weather Instead.”