What a simple cake can do

My relation with my mom is very particular, everyone who knows her always tells me that I am an exact copy of her. Same moves, same thought, same attitude, same way of seeing life, and we also share the same defect, we are very clueless, and this can sometimes be a problem.

When I was a child I used to spend my time in the kitchen watching my mom cooking. A current Sunday with the radio on and the only interrupt that stopped the music was the sound of the oven, the cheesecake was ready. The smell of melted cheese made me run to the kitchen just to be the first of my family to try my mom’s cake.

Over the years my mother showed me her secret recipe to make the best cheesecake in the world, and little by little I was learned to cook it, but I never got a result as good as hers. But not only in kitchen matters, I’ve always wanted to follow my mother’s steps.

Normally, a clueless person is not aware of the phone for answering calls or informing that everything is ok, but I started realizing that when I started the university far from home. I still have discussions with my friends for taking a long time to answer their messages, but well, they know that this is me.

I was born in a small city in the north of Spain, Burgos, known for its hard and cold winter, and when I was eighteen I went to Madrid to start my university stage. This was an absolute change in my life. From one day to the next, I passed from living in my parents’ house, to being totally independent. New friends, new city, new routine, new life.

My first month in Madrid my father called to the reception of my student’s residence because he had no news about me since 10 days. The director of the residence knocked on my door and gave me the phone saying “please tell your father that you are alive”. I laughed. Ashamed I took the phone and I received one of the biggest scoldings of my life.

My first return home after my first month in Madrid was one of the best memories I have. When I got off the bus my father was there waiting for me, he hugged me and he said “thank goodness I asked in the station at what time the bus from Madrid arrived, because I called you a thousand times but, as usual, you didn’t answer my calls”, we laughed and we went home.

When I came through the door, suddenly, the smell that I loved so much as a child appeared again, cake just made, my mom’s cheesecake. My mother came out of the kitchen and hugged me like never before. Mi parents, my brothers and me spent all the afternoon eating cake while I told them everything that had happened in my new life.

Time passed and it became a tradition that every last weekend of every month, I would went back home. But the story had changed, instead of taking the ticket on Friday afternoon, I started buying the morning bus, so I could cook the cheesecake with my mother.

My friends from my student residence never understood why I always left before everyone else just for cooking, and they used to say me things like “oh, what a simple cake can do!”. But what they didn’t know is that those hours were my special moment with my mom, it was our moment.

Everything would be easier if I just did like everyone else, and call my mother every day saying “yes, everything is fine mom, nothing new, I’ll call you tomorrow”. This easy call could work with my father, but with my mom everything was different. We didn’t need that call for knowing that we missed each other, because both of us knew that our time cooking and talking had more value than a simple and insignificant phone call. It doesn’t matter that it was only once a month.

Two years ago I returned home and my mom was sick. She had a big cold because that year the winter in Burgos was colder than normal. When I arrived she was in bed so we couldn’t cook together, it was the first time I had to make my own cheesecake and my jury was going to be my master, my mom.

When she tried it she said “It’s not so tasty, but only because we have not done it together”.

My time in Madrid ended last year, but now I’m even further from home and I have not been back for a long time. Like always, my father texts me thousand of times, but again, with my mom is not the same. When I go to a restaurant and I order cheesecake I send a picture to her, I don’t need write any message, because this means that I remember her and I miss her.

I’m counting the days to return home for Christmas and tell my mother all my news, with a cheesecake freshly made in the background, of course.