20 Quotes by Jael McHenry

I will take a new approach to death, because what is important about death is not the dead. It’s the living. Those of us left behind.

Contact.When someone touches me wrong it isn’t a feeling. It isn’t hate or fear or pain. It is just blackness and a chant in me: get/out/get/out/get/out.

I need the comfort. I look for a food memory to calm me and I settle on ceviche. A tart bite, a clean, fresh wave of flavor. Think of the process. Raw fish is translucent, but when you dip the lime juice onto it, it becomes something else. Cubes of white-fleshed fish begin to flake. Shrimp turn pink. Texture becomes color. Visible streaks, almost stripes, show the grain.

I need something to calm me. Something sweet and rich and decadent. Not chocolate, not pie. There it is. Tres leches cake. A white cake waiting in a white porcelain baking dish. Cream pouring down, not a drizzle, but a thick, steady, heavy stream. Soaking into the dry sponge of the cake. Being drunk up hungrily. Seeming to disappear, but changing everything. Texture. Taste. The cake can't stay the way it is. Without all three milks it's too dry. It has to change.

hero-worship of one parent over another is normal but can still be destructive

While I'm waiting, I reach into the cupboard for dried pineapple. I added them to the grocery order because I find them reassuring, but they have to be the right kind. Ma started buying the fancy natural low-sulfur version from Trader Joe's in the past few years. Those are fibrous and taste good for you. These are the ones from my childhood, which just taste good. They are as yellow as lemons, crusted all around with sugar. The inside is as thick and wet as a gumdrop.

Gert has a voice like the poppy seed filling of hamantaschen, inky and sweet, but it's her Cuban pastries I really remember. Even now, remembering, the taste of her coconut turnovers fills my mouth. Creamy, papery white filling. Rich yellow pastry falling apart in flakes.

There is no normal. There’s only what’s right for you and being honest.

While I’m waiting, I reach into the cupboard for dried pineapple. I added them to the grocery order because I find them reassuring, but they have to be the right kind. Ma started buying the fancy natural low-sulfur version from Trader Joe’s in the past few years. Those are fibrous and taste good for you. These are the ones from my childhood, which just taste good. They are as yellow as lemons, crusted all around with sugar. The inside is as thick and wet as a gumdrop.