On food (my favorite subject). And mothers. And love.

I was puzzled when she hugged me and I realized her tears were not just about saying goodbye. I expected to hear, “Have a good trip, we’ll miss you, I wish we didn’t live so far away.” Instead, she said, “Take care of him. He eats little.” It felt like a rebuke, a chastisement. I was offended. On the airplane I asked him why she had been crying so much, why she had said that to me. I didn’t understand what it meant for him to be her baby.

The first time I saw his mom cook was here, a few days before the wedding, for an audience of friends interested in a traditional food made without a recipe by experienced hands. She made a mound of flour directly on the counter, shaping it like a volcano. In the volcano’s hole she poured a little warm water and pinched some flour into it so that beads of dough began to form into a ball. She poured and pinched a little at a time until the volcano was gone and she was kneading one pliant chubby ball of dough. She used a knife to carve off smaller chunks, until it became a colony of miniatures. One little ball at a time, she used her left index finger and thumb to spin around under her right hand, shoving with the base of her thumb, lifting with the tips of her fingers, all in a quick rhythm, until it was a perfect sphere. Then each sphere was flattened, coated with sunflower oil, sandwiched with another one, rolled out with a rolling pin, coated again with sunflower oil, and finally stretched larger than a pizza, thinner than paper, a little translucent. A mixture of eggs, plain yogurt, feta cheese, and salt was waiting in a bowl to be dropped in dollops onto the sheet of dough. Then she folded the edge, rolling up the sheet until it was a long lumpy snake, and coiled the snake onto a greased pan, linking its tail with the head of the next one, until the pan was one spiral of filled and rolled dough sheets. After brushing it all one more time with oil, it went in a very hot oven for half an hour.

Oh I crave this food—pita, it’s called. I learned how to make it, beginning that very first time with her, blushing with embarrassment when with everyone looking at me I couldn’t manage to form one of those smooth spheres, and blushing with anger when he, who had never even attempted to make it, tried with best intentions to give me tips. Once or twice after we had been married for a while, it came out almost perfectly when I made it on my own.

My grandma used to put the butter on the toast before it went in the toaster, so when it came out the butter was all melted into the bread and the toast was crispy and gooey at the same time. She would ask you if you were hungry, and when you said you had already eaten and were full, she would invite you into her kitchen and make you eat some of her canned peaches, broccoli cheese casserole, banana bread, and whatever else she had prepared in the fridge, or at least some sandwich cookies hidden in a pot in the cupboard.

His mom and my grandma knew something I didn’t that day at the airport near our one year anniversary: how it feels to want to feed others just as much as you want to feed yourself.

I hold my baby and I kiss her again and again and again. I hug her and I tell her I love her over and over and over. I worry about what to feed her. What should this little human eat? What is good for her, what is best, is she getting enough?

He and I go to bed and we read. He holds his book open above his chest until the blood probably drains from his fingers, and I prop my book against him, my head on his shoulder. He says he is going to go to sleep. I put my book down and my hand under his neck, my wrist turned up just behind his ear, feeling his hair. I kiss him like a baby on his cheekbone, his eyebrows, his temples, his nose, his jaw, his forehead. His eyes are closed and he lets me, like a baby.

I get it now.