Handmade Cheese

“She even made her own cheese.”

God, she’s proud of me. She is so very proud of me and sometimes that makes me angry.

I don’t always feel like there is that much to be proud of when someone else’s eyes look into my life but she does. The points of pride I pick out in my life have always been big events. They are the job I quit, my move to India, the conversations I had with bright-eyed girls, the writing I have done and mostly, that’s it.

For my mother, it’s not necessarily the big events.

I was standing at the register paying for a French-style rolling pin that was perfectly milled out of a single piece of wood when, on an exhale, my mother told the woman behind the counter that I had plans to make my own pasta. The woman’s eyes got wide and she asked, what else do you cook.

My mother answered for me, she likes to answer for me and told her about the palak paneer I made on Wednesday. She omitted that this dish was what kept me living in those first few weeks I was adjusting to India, but blurted, she even made the cheese that goes with it!

This was the type of oversharing I talk about with her. No, I do not want your cousin to come to see my tiny house. No, do not tell your brother how much money I make. No, do not tell the woman at Nordstrom that I am a writer.

I felt little bubbles of angry forming in my belly and allowed them to settle as I took my new rolling pin into my hand. When we left the store I rolled my eyes and hugged her. In past lives, her admissions of pride about the things I do and the person I am would have resulted in me verbally berating her and asking her to not do it anymore. Do not overshare, I would say.

When I hugged her I thought of how proud I am that I have a mother who is completely absorbed with pride when she thinks about me and the simple things I do. I do not have to move abroad again and create time living that is undeniably me for her to be proud of me. Yes, seeing me live in a way that makes the space just below my belly feel settled will make her beam with awful pride but I don’t have to do that to maintain her admiration.

She is proud that I am kind and that, to my core, I love the people I come from. She is proud when I draw or paint little pictures of cats and will show them off at my birthday party and she is proud of the way I am. She is proud of the way I speak and think and would have still been proud of me even if I wasn’t a first-generation college graduate.

I am the horse my mother would bet on. If I am certain of only one thing in this life it is that my mother is proud of me.

She sees me as one million times more than my resume. She sees me as one million times more than I see myself. Because she sees me as me and that is something to be proud of.