The Squeeze

By MARY LOU SANELLI

I feel so excited to launch my new book in September! And a little lost because my mom didn’t live long enough to share this with me.

Yesterday, the lost sensation kept growing. If it keeps growing, I thought, it will squeeze me out.

If asked, I’d say plain old grief is what I’m feeling. If pressed, I’d have to admit that the line between grief and feeling lost feels exceptionally thin sometimes.

Like today. It made me rush through my writing routine, throw a skirt on over my tights, and walk at a clip to Safeway to fill my basket with three kinds of grated cheese, two jars of Ragu, a box of lasagna noodles, and a mound of red peppers to roast under the broiler, all the makings of my mother’s lasagna, “to lift my spirits,” I told the checker.

Actually, any home-cooked meal can lift my spirits somewhat. But never as much as a lasagna will.

I stand in the aisle feeling for the firmest pepper skins. I learned how to do this when I was six. I had special sensitivity in my fingertips, according to my mother. “Actually, you have sensitive everything,” is what she said, and I remember her saying so hurt my feelings. I didn’t know why, only that my heart started beating higher up in my chest. Until it got all the way to my throat. After that, I just wanted to get away from her.

She knew what she said bothered me, and she tried to extend her best apology-smile, but I kept my eyes on the peppers and avoided all eye contact with her to block any chance of her trying to smile at me again. I stayed hurt for the rest of the shop ping trip, even when we got to checkout and she told the checker that I’d selected every one of the peppers so she knew they were perfect.

But when she put her arm around my shoulders to give me a little squeeze, I let her.

Today, that’s the squeeze that comes to me whenever I see peppers, red, green, yellow, it doesn’t matter. They all pull me closer.

“What’s this?” Larry says when he sees the bag.

“No big deal,” though it is, “lasagna is what I do when I want to be my mom.”

“You’re not going to start smoking are you?”

“Very funny.” I crinkled my nose. But I’d completely forgotten that for 30 years, my mom loved her cigarettes as much as she loved to cook.

I had been so busy remembering the good smell of lasagna I hadn’t thought of the bad smell of her Tareytons. She could have at least switched to something like Odens which is supposed to be better quality from what I’ve heard. But her habit was rock solid.

I remember the time she yelled at my father that he was all smoke and mirrors and he yelled back, “Yeah, well, you’re nothing but smoke and cigarettes!” Truer words were never said.

Just the other day, I said to my friend Liz, “It’s weird, but sometimes I’m afraid of being just like my mother, and other times I’m afraid I’m not like her enough.”

“I get it. I wear … ” she catches herself, “I used to wear that sweater you said smells like a goat because my mother gave it to me. She was never lost to me when I wore that sweater. But the weird thing is, if I look in the mirror and I see her face staring back at me, I just hate it.”

“I know, so which is it?”

“Both,” she replied.

Some people just know how to cement a friendship.

Mary Lou Sanelli’s new book, A Woman Writing, is due out in September. Visit marylousanelli.com.
“A SHARED SPACE” is an ongoing reader-submitted column. To share your story, email coconnor@midweek.com