Second Draft Memoir

The kitchen is warm in every way. The sun is shining through the our window, highlighting my mom’s oak brown hair. There’s a pot of chicken broth on the stove, chicken and onions boiling in it. I see her hands cutting up dumplings, delicate and precise. Her hands were covered in flour, but you could still see their history. You could see the same care that she gave to me as an infant in the way that she handles the dumplings, treating them with a gentleness, an underlying protection as well. She cares for them. She cares for me.

Ever since I was little, I was different from the other boys, who seemed to know this inherent difference just as much as I did. I would always get teased relentlessly, getting called anywhere from girly to faggot. My mom would always tell me to never pay attention to those who said those mean things. She told me, my hands in hers,”People can’t stand it when someone dares to be special, and God made you special.” At night, I would put on my sister’s night gowns to dance around the house. I laughed and my smile was always wide.

My mother was my mirror. When I smiled, she smiled. When I cried, she cried. She was my rock. I could always depend on her to be on my side, one hundred percent of the time, for certain. I was always baffled by that, and I always wondered how long it would last.

“Jakie, you wanna pull apart the chicken for me?” I’m brought out of my daze. I cross the kitchen to come to my mother’s side, stepping over our black lab. He looked at me and I at him, his eyes looked worried. He could probably tell that there was something going on in my head. He always mirrored the emotion in the room.

• Go back to when we got our dog
• come back to the situation
• talk about the warm kitchen getting uncomfortable