Flour Angels

By Chris Sendelbach, Henry, Illinois

As appeared in

Second thoughts filled my head as I approached the back door of my mother-in-law’s house one December morning.

Mary and I had never gotten along. When my husband, Manuel, introduced us, his mother had taken one look at me and pronounced, “She is not good Greek girl.”

She was right, to a point. I wasn’t Greek. But I loved Manuel and I wasn’t going away. It was easier when he was in the Navy. The two of us lived in San Diego. But then we moved back home to Indiana. The time away didn’t seem to do anything to improve his mother’s opinion of me.

“She looks at me and sees what she wants to see,” I’d told Manuel the night before. “She’ll never understand me.”

“She’ll come around after a day of baking,” he said. “By this time tomorrow you’ll be great friends.”

I can’t do this, I thought. Before I could creep away the back door opened. “Late, late, late,” Mary said, shaking her finger. “Bread has already risen once.”

She bustled inside to the kitchen counter, where loaves of Greek Christmas bread were scattered on the spotless counter tops. I had to follow.

“Glad you’re here, Chris!” said my sister-in-law, Bobbie, punching out a slab of bread dough. “We can use more hands. You can’t have too many pastries, cookies and baklava at Christmas, right, Ma?”

“Never enough, of course,” said Mary. I could hear the affection in her voice when she answered. Bobbie was no more Greek than I was, but she’d never had my troubles getting along with Mary. She even felt comfortable enough with her to call her “Ma,” something I’d never been able to bring myself to do. It just seemed wrong.

Mary opened a new bag of flour. Puffs of white powder flew into the air like tiny angels. I could use some angels to get through this baking lesson, I thought. Would I ever learn half the recipes Mary thought a good Greek wife should know?

“Why are you still wearing coat?” Mary said. “Hang up in closet. We make pastries, cookies. Take all day. No standing around.”

My cheeks burned all the way to the hallway closet. Why am I here? I thought. I’ll never learn everything she thinks I ought to know. Bobbie followed me to the closet. “Chris, Ma’s just old fashioned. Traditional,” she said.

“Tradition. I know,” I said, rolling my eyes. “It’s all she thinks about.”

“It’s important to her,” said Bobbie. “Did you know when Ma came over from Kalymnos her father had already picked out her husband? That was tradition back then!”

“Manuel never told me his parents had an arranged marriage,” I said. I’d read about arranged marriages, but couldn’t imagine meeting anyone who’d ever had one. It seemed like something out of a movie. No wonder Mary was so surprised when Manuel brought me home. No wonder she couldn’t understand what it was like to feel like an outsider.

“The arrangement fell through,” said Bobbie. “So there Ma was in a new country, searching for a husband. She had to meet a lot of suitors before her father agreed to let her marry one. Just imagine how hard that must have been.”