Katy's Personal Essay Draft: Making Cheesecake

Making Cheesecake

I throw my backpack down on the floor of our little two-bedroom apartment. David isn’t home yet. It’s been a really long day. I sit on our overstuffed black leather couch, thinking. I’m not thinking about anything in particular. The chaotic events, ideas, and feelings of the day swirl like mist through my brain and seep out of my ears and eyes and nose, never to be remembered or thought again. They leave behind a bitter feeling. I can’t quite put my finger on what it is, so I get up. I’ve decided I need to create, to bake something sweet to get through that bitterness. I fling my shoes off of my feet and trudge my way to the cupboard. It squeaks as it swings open.

Now I drop some cream cheese in a plastic blue bowl. I take a spatula and swirl in the sticky sweetened milk. I crack an egg. It falls with a soft plop into the cream cheese, the golden yolk breaking gently and spreading into the surrounding firm whiteness. The mixture puts up a gentle resistance as I move the spatula, my muscles contracting rhythmically. No need to think or feel here.

The kitchen is cluttered, measuring cups strewn across the stovetop, the sink overflowing with dishes from last night's potato soup. The kitchen feels overwhelming. But I don’t think about that. I am separate, as I continue mixing, transfixed by the gold and white in my light blue bowl, swirling, mixing, becoming one.

Funny, I think, I’ve never really liked cream cheese. Cream cheese is sour and salty and bland all at once. But I love cheesecake. I think how excited David will be when he gets home and sees my creation. Warmth shoots through me.

David. We’ve been married eight months now. I pour the cream cheese mixture into the chocolate crust. It spreads and fills the whole shape. It’s strange how that mixture is liquid and solid all at once.

Anger and love have mingled these past eight months. Anger when in the cold darkness of the early morning, I will slump my way to the bathroom and find cold, bare porcelain. Love as I feel his arms sneak around me when I climb back into bed.

I think back to the moment when, gazing nervously at one another over the altar, we gave ourselves to each other for eternity. Eternity. How vast it seems. How incomprehensible. And yet, it was so easy to say the words in that moment.

Helen Hayes once wrote, “The story of a love is not important-what is important is that one is capable of love. It is perhaps the only glimpse we are permitted of eternity”. I think she is right. David’s and my story is unremarkable, unimportant. And yet, each of those moments in which I feel love I do think I see a brief glimpse of eternity. Never for long. I cannot describe it. I only know that in those moments, it does not seem quite so vast or incomprehensible.

The oven beeps. I open the door and slide the pan inside. The solid-liquid jiggles as I push it into place. I push the buttons to set the timer for twenty minutes.

Now I begin to set in on the kitchen, slowly attempting to create order out of chaos. The potato soup sticks stubbornly to the bowls. I push the knob on the sink further to the left, hoping the heat will loosen the debris. I swirl the water around and around, watching clouds of yellow white begin to unfurl in the liquid.

My days are full of labors like these. No longer can I rationalize that the dishes aren’t all mine, because they are ours now. The kitchen must be cleaned, either by David or by me. Sometimes we clean together, sometimes separately. But it is our responsibility, together.

I am sweeping the floor when the oven beeps again. I open the door and a cloud of invisible steam hits me in the face. The cake looks perfect. I transfer it to the fridge. Now it’s time to wait. The heat cooked the eggs, and now the cold will stiffen that solid-liquid cream cheese.

David arrives just in time. Excitement builds in my stomach as he walks through the door. He is weary, his blue eyes are circled by dark, and his hair has become disheveled.

I pull the cheesecake out of the fridge, “Look what I made you!”

He smiles, “Wow, thank you so much, that looks delicious!”

As we bite into our cheesecake, the savory sweet softness rolling across our tongues, I am perfectly content. This is what eternity will be.