Page 14 of So This Is Love

“No, but they’ll be here in a little while. RJ’s preschool was closed today so Lauryn asked me to pick him up.”

My mom places a cutting board down on the island and starts to cut some of the vegetables that she pulled from the fridge. “How are you doing? How long are you in town for?”

“A while,” I reply with a pause. “I’ve decided to come back to the city.”

“Really? That’s unexpected.”

“Yeah for me too actually,” I reply.

“What made you make that decision?”

“I don’t know, I came for a short visit a little while ago and it just felt like the right thing. It’s not that big of a deal though.”

The knife stills, breaking from the rhythmic chops that were happening just seconds before, and my mom looks up from the vegetables to me. She gives me one of those ‘mom looks’ , the one with the raised eyebrow that says so much without actually saying anything at all.

“What?”

“Nothing,” she replies nonchalantly. “I was just seeing if that’s the story you’re sticking to.”

“It’s not a big deal, I don’t want to make it more than it is.”

“Honey, you have been off in Los Angeles ever since you got that deal and started your music career. And you have never once wanted to move back home. You may not want to see it now, but it means something.”

I don’t have a response to that so instead I shift the conversation to something else for us to talk about while she cooks.

My parents were older when they had me, years after they had had both of my sisters. So between two full fledged careers and everything that comes with taking care of three kids, to saythey were busy was an understatement. But a time that I always valued with my mom was when she was cooking. Usually my sisters were out doing an extracurricular activity or with their friends or when I got a little older, away at college. So this was time that I got to spend with just me and my mom.

A while later my sisters Lauryn and Shannon walk in through the front door carrying grocery bags. I stand to greet them and take the bags from their hands.

“B! I’m so happy you’re home,” Lauryn says, wrapping me in a tight hug.

Lauryn and Shannon have been mistaken for twins for forever even though they are almost two years apart. They both take after our mother, sharing the same umber skin tone and almond eyes while I looked more like our dad.

“It’s good to see you too sis.”

We all walk together to the kitchen and I set the bags down on the counter.

“Hey girls,” Mom says, giving them both kisses on the cheek when they enter the kitchen.

“The store was out of the croutons that you wanted, but we got everything else that you asked for,” Shannon says as she starts taking things out of the grocery bags.

“That’s okay, the salad will be just fine without them. Where’s my son in law, I thought he was coming with you?”

“Ryan was called in for surgery,” Lauryn says.

“Okay, I’ll make sure to send you home with some food for him.”

My mom sets two baking dishes down in front of me, one with lasagna and the other with garlic bread, my favorite meal.

“Set these on the table please. I just have to make something for RJ to eat.”

I do as my mom asked while she goes into her pantry and comes back with a cup of microwave mac and cheese. She adds water to it and puts it in the microwave to cook.

“Wow, Ma you’re going soft on me,” I say, jokingly “We didn’t get any special meals. What happened to having to eat what you put on our plate?”

“You only had to eat things you didn’t like that one time and I never made them for you again. Don’t exaggerate.”

The microwave beeps and she takes the cup out and stirs in the powdered cheese that it came with.

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