Hi. I don’t really write for fun or for myself anymore. I
want to, though, so I’ve decided to try NaNoWriMo this year. National Novel
Writing Month is November and within that month, to successfully complete
NaNoWriMo, you need to write 50,000 words. A novel. In all honesty, I highly
doubt that I’ll be able to do that. I like to go for long walks and bake and do
other things. And I sit at a computer too much as it is. But I’m going to do my
best to write as much as I can this month and I’ll put it all here. One thing I
can guarantee: much of it is not going to be interesting or worthwhile. Since
it’s so much writing in such a short amount of time, I’ll be putting up a lot
of not-thought-out, meh stuff. So please enjoy, haha!
Oh, and this isn’t going to be a novel. I don’t have the
capacity for that. What I think I’ll do is on the days when I can’t really think
of anything to write about (which will probably be most days), I’m going to dig
into my archive of photos, choose one at random, and write about it. I’ll shoot
for 2,000 words (I’m sure I’ll miss a few days). It might be based on my memory
of the photo or events/people/places surrounding the photo, it might be made up
and fictional, or it might be a hybrid. We’ll see! So. Day 1…
These are cupcakes from Sugar Mama’s in Flagstaff, Arizona.
White Chocolate Lavender and Double Chocolate. This photo is maybe six years
old and I can still remember the flavors. Erin S and I would walk up to Sugar
Mama’s a few times a month and each buy a cupcake or two and then take them
back to the PIE to split. Cupcakes at the PIE… Program in Intensive English.
Erin and the PIE and Sugar Mama’s and these cupcakes got me through the first
year of grad school.
The ladies at Sugar Mama’s always intrigued me. They were
covered in tattoos and powdered sugar, most of them had dreadlocked hair pulled
back into thick ponytails. They’d be icing a cake or whipping up frosting or transferring
cookies to a rack to cool whenever we’d walk in. And they’d never immediately
stop what they were doing to help us, which, in a bakery, I realize now that I
really like. It’s a good tactic. It gave us time to see the behind the scenes
action. The little dollops of frosting getting plopped carefully onto a kid’s
birthday cake, the puff of powdered sugar rising up out of the frosting mixer
as it whirred together the next batch. The bag of chocolate chips sitting on
the counter, waiting to go into a big bowl of cookie dough. The scrape of a
spatula gliding under a hot cookie, scooping it up, and then dropping it onto a
rack to cool, leaving a tiny trail of melted chocolate in its wake.
Getting to see all of these things made me feel very good
about Sugar Mama’s. They’d let us stand there as they worked away just long
enough for us to understand that they meant business when it came to baking.
There was no skullduggery going on there, just sugar and flour and butter combining
in the best possible, most magical ways. We’d stand and watch and take it all
in, and the smell of it all, and then, just at the very second when it started
to feel maybe a tiny bit long, they’d decisively yet carefully put down whatever
magic they were creating, straighten up, smile knowingly at us, and ask us how
we were.
How were we? We had lesson plans to prepare, essays to
grade, readings to finish, exams to study for, and presentations to practice,
but in that moment we were great. We were witnessing a different, delicious
life and we, or at least I, was envying it some. I spent several moments in
Sugar Mama’s early on in grad school, and those moments always made the
prospect of owning a bakery seem very plausible, and very appealing. People do
this. People own bakeries with big, industrial mixers and huge ovens and
checkered floors and vats of frosting. They make a living by baking things for
other people all day long, and they seem to love it. But we’re only allowed one
life at a time and I’m already pretty deep into teaching, but running a bakery
sounds like so much fun and this bakery makes it all look so easy… but, well, I’ll
just take a lavender cupcake to go. Thanks. The moment we left Sugar Mama’s and
its checkered floors and its freshly baked cookie aroma behind, the lovely
realness of owning a bakery would evaporate and would only sound too difficult.
Back to grading papers and learning how to teach and teaching how to learn.
For my birthday a few months after this photo was taken,
Erin, Joe, Kerry, and Nick got me a gift certificate to Sugar Mama’s for twelve
cupcakes. Those people knew me well and if only we all still lived in the same
cozy little city… I’d bake cookies and cupcakes for them all the time. A couple
days after my birthday, we all went to a reputable tattoo parlor in Flagstaff
and got matching tattoos. I am aware of how cheesy that sounds, trust me. But
each time I catch a glimpse of my "ghoti", I’m taken back to game nights
and beer at brews and cues, popcorn fights and sprawling conversations at the
castle, loud music and cute dogs at the monte v, papers and books and research
and snacks and stress and laughter and warmth at the trailer. None of which
would have been nearly as fun without those delightful people.
And, of course, cupcakes from Sugar Mama’s. Whenever I took
the gift certificate into Sugar Mama’s to claim my next prize, one of the
tattooed, dread-locked ladies would smile and put a little line in the upper
right hand corner and tell me how many cupcakes I had consumed and how many I
had left to go. Then they’d hand it back to me along with my boxed up treat. I’d
tuck the gift certificate safely into my wallet so I’d always have it with me.
You never know when a need for cupcakes might arise. I never ate all of the
cupcakes, though. I still feel bad about that. I had four left to go when we
just stopped going. I think Erin and I went there maybe once or twice in the second
year of grad school. The magic of everything had worn off a little bit by then.
It has been 5 years since we all graduated and moved on.
Erin stayed to get her PhD. Joe stayed and continued working full time in the
PIE. Kerry moved to Macau to teach, and Nick and his wife also moved to Turkey,
but we lived in separate cities. We visited each other, though. After the first
year, we also all had a reunion in Flagstaff and told our stories of post-grad
life. But I don’t remember much from those visits. The things that I remember
happened during those two years of grad school, when we spent nearly every day
together and depended on one another for fun and help and comfort.
During the reunion, we walked by Sugar Mama’s and Erin and I
talked about going in, for old-time’s sake, but we didn’t. We just walked by
and looked through the window and saw the ladies inside. They were still in
there whipping up their delicious magic and making their customers wait just
the right amount of time before acknowledging them. We should have gone in. Instead
we just walked around and got stuck waiting for the train to pass and tried to
recreate the old friendship, but something was gone. Each of us had new lives
and new friends in different places, and our minds kept wandering over to them.
The reunion passed and we all left again and just like that our five member "ghoti" troupe dissolved and will likely never reform. It’s comforting to
know, though, that each of us has a visible reminder of who we once were and
what we once did inked permanently somewhere on us. Mine is on the side of my
right foot and I often completely forget about it. For days. Life goes on and
it’s impossible to keep all of the good things that have happened in mind. But
every now and then it’ll catch my attention and make me smile.
Last year, when I was moving back to Nevada from New Jersey,
I stopped for an afternoon in Flagstaff. I walked by the PIE and the castle and
brews and cues. It all looked just as I had left it, for the most part. Joe and
I met for lunch at a new restaurant that he said was really good. It had been
about 4 years since I’d seen him. As we ate, he told me about his little kids
and his dogs and his dreams to get a PhD. He told me about Erin and how she had
moved back to Michigan to be with her family. I told him about New Jersey and
Turkey and how strange it felt to not have a job. We talked about meeting up in
the future and trying to get everyone back together, but we knew it would
probably be impossible. Lives scatter so easily and irreparably, no matter how
badly they miss each other. Everyone had moved on.
I think perhaps because I was a bit nervous to meet up with
an old friend for the first time in years, I didn’t notice the restaurant where
we had lunch at first. It was bright yellow inside, freshly painted, with crisp
white curtains. The seats and tables had a retro sort of 1950’s feel to them.
There was an old-timey straw dispenser on each table and paintings on the wall
of old diners. The floor was checkered and that’s what caught my attention as
we got up to leave. The checkered floor. Then I realized the counter and
windows also looked very familiar. We were in Sugar Mama’s. This time, though,
there were no tattooed, dreadlocked baking ladies and no puffs of powdered
sugar floating through the air. The waiters had on black aprons and matching
black and white shirts and their hair was almost invisible, tucked up into
black baseball caps. Wafts of bacon and melting cheese had replaced the sugar
and butter.
“Isn’t this Sugar Mama’s?” I asked Joe. It took him a moment
to remember, and then he said, “Oh, yeah! That place went under a couple years
ago. Just couldn’t hack it, I guess. This place is doing great, though. I’m
glad they’re here.” I wanted to ask him if he remembered the gift certificate
with the little lines and the cupcakes and the tattooed ladies and the times
when Sugar Mama’s made all of our lives better, but I didn’t want to make him
feel bad. And maybe it was just me that loved Sugar Mama’s and what it stood
for and everyone else just played along. My dream bakery had closed and been
replaced by a bright 50’s style diner and one of my fellow "ghoti" members couldn’t have been happier about it.
Word count: 2,027
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