Maple's Paincakes

“Hi! My name is Maple and my one true love is cooking.” Maybe this isn’t strong enough; it seems basic, Maple thought, as she started smiling to the camera in front of her.

Her kitchen was very clean that morning, as the sun was rising, letting in more and more of its spring embrace inside the room’s walls and over the white countertops. Maple thought it better to start filming around 7 AM, so she could get on to editing later on that day, but she didn’t take into consideration how the light changing with the sunrise might affect her video quality.

“I started this YouTube channel to share my love with y’all! Today we will make pancakes together, in honour of my mother and her fantastic maple syrup pancakes.” Saying this, her smile changed just a little, letting on the actual feeling of heartache she felt regarding her mother. It’s been a year now since she has departed, and Maple decided to change her career path and cling on to her memories of her mother’s job. She thought that keeping her hands busy mixing flour and such might resemble the touch of her mother on a late night when she was studying at the kitchen table, while her mother was baking her famous ‘2 AM study cookies’.

“For this recipe, we’re gonna need flour, butter, baking powder, sugar, milk, eggs, a little bit of salt and, of course, maple syrup. You can find the quantities in the description down below. And, if you’re going down there anyway, why not hit the subscribe button to see how its colour changes as you do? Moreover, we can experiment together as the bell will notify you each time I post a cooking video – let’s see if Pavlov’s work is real and if you will be ready to eat as soon as you see the notification pop up!” And that’s one way to waste years of one’s life on a degree that you won’t end up using anyway, Maple thought as she started mixing the flour and the baking powder in a bowl.

After finishing filming, she took the well-arranged-on-a-plate pancakes to her desk, along with her chocolate-flavoured coffee and sat down to edit the videos. Instead of doing that, she went on researching ‘cooking jobs in my area’, knowing very well that a degree in Psychology would do her no help in being hired as a chef. Because of that, she started the ‘Maple is your chef today’ YouTube channel. She thought that making some money online could help her get by until she finishes some cooking classes. After quitting her job she realised that those classes are extremely expensive and no one would hire a chef with no experience.

She then gave up her rented apartment and moved back to the house she grew up in. She decided to keep it mostly the same, but rearranged some of the furniture and blocked the door to her mother’s room. It took her a few months to settle in, with all the nightmares and the fear of her mother haunting the house (for some illogical reason she started discussing with her therapist). She did nothing but clean and clean for weeks on end, until she felt satisfied with how everything was sparkly. She even asked a friend who claims to be a witch to do some sort of cleansing ritual around and inside the house so she can feel safer and ghost-free.

“There are no ghosts here, though”, her friend said once she arrived at the house.

“It’d make me feel better”, Maple replied and so they started sage-ing the place.

Maple’s friends could not understand why she chose to move back home and start a YouTube channel – for cooking that is! She never cooked anyone anything. She has never cooked a meal for herself; not that they knew of. They thought she must be losing her mind in this grieving process and their fears came to life once that witchy friend told them about the ritual Maple wanted at the house. She had no reason to be afraid of her mother’s ghost, especially because she gave up her path to follow in her mother’s footsteps.

One of Maple’s friends that had known her since high school talked about the way in which her mother used to cook for them every time she was visiting. And not only for them, as it seems her mother was always in the kitchen making something. There wasn’t a day in which Maple didn’t have any cooked food. Her mother used to work at a restaurant down the block; a 10 minutes’ walk from the house. She had been working there her whole life; it was almost as if it was her own restaurant! Everyone knew and loved this little family. Maple used to go over there after school and bust tables in between doing homework with her mom in the back room.

Her mother always asked them if they needed anything or wanted anything special to eat and kept asking Maple’s friends to stay over for dinner. It wasn’t clear for her friend if she was doing this out of her love for cooking or her love for Maple but one thing is clear: Maple has never offered to cook for her before. She knows Maple is showing her love through encouragement and through spending time with the people she loves. And maybe that’s a reason why she fell so hard in a downward spiral: because she spent more time working for her degree and pursuing her career than she did with her mother who was getting old and seemed paler with each selfie Maple took and posted on her instagram after her visits.

After finding no jobs that didn't require a certificate in cooking, Maple sipped her coffee and began cropping the videos, sticking them and creating a new one. She worked on the lights and the contrast of the video, as well as adjusted its quality. She posted it on her channel, but not without a shaky first ‘enter’ to publish. She then decided to promote the video on TikTok, as most of her friends were using it and she heard people go famous real quick on that app. What was next on her to-do list of the day was journaling. 

As a therapist, she knew the importance of writing and analysing her thoughts so she could process them later on, so she wrote about the way in which she used to go to sleep at 3 AM or not sleep at all before going head first in meetings all day long. Nowadays she goes to sleep around 11 PM or doesn’t sleep at all. Like tonight she didn’t get any sleep, so she decided to get up around 6 and arrange the kitchen for her filming session. What concerned her is that, even with little to no sleep, she didn’t feel tired at all. She just felt numb.

Looking at the kitchen counters didn’t help, as they reminded her of how her mother used to cook dinner on them, cutting the vegetables in small pieces, sometimes cutting the broccoli stem in heart shapes for her to find and enjoy in her meal. She remembered how her mother used to wash the dishes while humming a soft melody to herself. When going up the stairs, she remembered how her mother used to come by every so often to bring random cookies or sweets she baked at work. She would knock at the door and only enter when Maple would tell her it’s ok to do so. When she was a teenager, it was a rare occasion for her mother to actually be let in, and now Maple regrets all of those moments. She decided she needed some fresh air after all this computer work. It was around noon when she grabbed her jacket, put on her shoes and walked out the door. That reminded her of how her mother used to yell “I love you” while walking out to go to work. She shook her head from side to side to escape from that memory and closed the door behind her. For a second, through the small window on the door, she could swear she saw her mother waving at her; just like she did when Maple was going to school in the morning. The habit began when she decided she wanted to become independent and didn't want to have her mother prepare her lunch anymore.

It was only then that she realised she had caused her mother to stop showing her love for her.

The day was sunny, but windy. It was the beginning of spring, with all that entails. The weather app said that day was going to be rainy, but to Maple’s surprise it seemed that the sky was cloudless, quite the opposite to her state of mind. Walking down the street, she saw a dog passing by with his owner, sniffing at bushes and barking at a bird that had flown too close to the ground. She chuckled to herself for a second and kept on walking. She thought that this would do her good, would make her get out of that house that is filled with memories. 

At the same time, this thought made her feel guilty, just as she felt after her mother passed away. When she was young, she only wanted to be alone, to step away from her childhood years, into adulthood. She was eager to leave home, move out and never look back, coming to visit her mother only from time to time, around Christmas or her mother’s birthday. This feeling of guilt that she felt for leaving her mother was the one that pushed her to move back in. She didn’t want to forget about her life nor about her mother; not for a second; not anymore. So she left her own life behind, a choice she made with loathing in her heart, but this bittersweet feeling she had thinking she would become a chef, like her mother, made her feel slightly better. As good as one can feel after they’ve lost everything, she thought after every time she had to answer to the people that asked her how she was. “After all, it’s been a year”, they would say, to which she would reply in her mind that grief manifests herself differently to different individuals and it doesn’t have a timeline, but she would react to the reply by nodding her head a couple of times, while smiling.

Thinking about all this, she didn’t notice that she was walking down the street towards the restaurant that her mother used to work at. She saw it from a block away, so she decided to turn back but, as she moved, she realised she wasn’t ready to go back inside the house just yet. So she stood there, a few metres away from the restaurant, in the middle of the sidewalk.

She closed her eyes as the sun was going up, almost reaching the top of her head, filling her on the inside with the pleasure of knowing the cold was going away. A few moments passed by and a voice called her name from a short distance.

“Maple?” the voice said.

“Yes?” Maple replied, opening her eyes towards the location where the voice came from.

“I thought it was you. I haven’t seen you in a while, you know,” the voice added, this time being more than just a voice. It was a plumpish woman in her 60s, with her white hairs showing under a colourful scarf. Her lips had been painted red, but that made her look pale, her expression fading under the poorly drawn lines.

“Hello, Miss Miller. It’s been a while, indeed,” Maple acknowledged.

Ms. Miller was her mother’s employer, the woman that owned the restaurant down the street. She inherited it almost a decade ago from her father who owned many of them around town. This was the only one she kept, as she felt that she was getting old and had no kids to leave them further as a legacy. She sold them and placed these money in a safe deposit at the bank, afraid people might rob her if they knew she had a small fortune hidden at her house.

“I was heading down to the restaurant. I need to drink some tea and check some numbers. Would you like to join me?” Ms. Miller suggested, seeing Maple’s dimming smile.

The young woman took a few seconds to think it through, as she didn’t want to go down the road in the first place, but she accepted, politely nodding. Ms. Miller asked her about her life and showed a substantial surprise regarding the fact that Maple had quit her job and moved back to the city.

The restaurant had some tables placed out front, under the cover of a small roof positioned right above the door. Inside, the lights were turned off and the tables covered in a dark blue that could be seen from out the window, the dehydrated peonies on the table being hidden by the dark-brown walls. Maple was remembering this place to be full of life, with the yellow walls and fresh flowers everywhere. Her mother’s voice would fill the atmosphere and was heard from time to time announcing the orders over the jazz music floating around the room. Miss Miller opened the door and invited Maple in, but she stopped in the doorframe, looking at the young girl’s face; aversion was settling in it, as woe covered the expression of her eyebrows.

“Are you alright, dear?” Ms. Miller asked, seeing all this.

“I just recall the place being different, that’s all,” Maple answered, with a soft sigh consuming what was left of her facial expression, balancing it back to its dull state. “I think I am going to walk around some more,” she added.

“That’s alright. I need to focus on my numbers anyway,” Ms. Miller responded, smiling back and closing the door behind her. 

Maple stood there as the old lady shut the door with an ‘uf’ that moved the bells from above it and made them ring. They moved from side to side for a few moments, as Maple was trying to gather her thoughts, focusing on them. Finally, she decided to just pass by the restaurant and go even further down the street to unwind in the park. As she took a step back, she saw a lady with a dog on a leash standing at red lights. Across the street, a young girl with a white bicycle is also waiting. Maple then took one last look at the restaurant, planning to avoid this building in the future and at that exact same moment, Ms. Miller put up a sign at the window saying:

“Chef wanted. For more details, come inside.”