Brownies

A personal essay about love, loss, and finding comfort in brownies.

Hello,

Today, I’m sharing a personal essay I wrote during a recent travel and food writing workshop with Diana Spechler. Enjoy and see you soon. —Alexis

Brownies

by Alexis Mera Damen

I dump the chocolate powder mix into a bowl, add water, and add chunks of soft, salted butter. I mix it with a wooden spoon—it gets darker, denser, and gooier. I pour it into the pan, smooth it out, but leave a little extra at the bottom of the bowl. I’m 39, I still lick the wooden spoon.

I’m 9 years old. I’m sitting on the white kitchen counter in my childhood home in Westchester, New York. I’m peering into the bowl, my mom is standing next to me, mixing the brownie batter, making sure to leave a little extra just for me.

The moist wooden spoon soaks up the chocolatey mix as I scrape the bowl. It’s sweet and salty, and it melts on my tongue. When I’m done, I notice in the bathroom mirror that a ring of chocolate coats the outer edges of my lips.

Nowadays, I make brownies for myself, 4,500 miles away in Amsterdam, while my mom spends her days in memory care in Ocala, Florida. My cravings come in waves—sometimes once a week, sometimes months apart. But whenever they do, I stand over my white kitchen counter in Amsterdam, stirring the powdery chocolate mix and then licking the wooden spoon, mothering myself the way she once did and remembering a simpler time.

Since her Alzheimer’s diagnosis on September 21, 2021, just six weeks after her 68th birthday, she has become softer, more open, and expressive. In the beginning, she had shared her frustration with me about what was happening to her, sometimes even cursing or crying. I was finally experiencing the vulnerable side of my mom that I had always longed for. But still, I miss the time before, when she was the mother and I was the daughter. The time before we had to hire a caregiver in July 2022, a month after my mom had lost her job. The time before she called me at five in the morning on October 27, 2022, because she couldn’t remember how she had gotten the gash on her forehead (we still don’t know, and we never will). The time before I had to trick her into assisted living, pitching it to her as a “cozy winter condo.” The time before she looked up at me helplessly as she sat on the toilet in July 2024, unsure of what to do next. The time before I spoon-fed her raspberries and vanilla ice cream.

My beautiful mom and little me - circa 1987 to 1988.

*

I had arrived at her house in Pennsylvania on a sunny, early fall day while she, my brother, and my aunt and uncle were at the neurologist’s office for her diagnosis. I hadn’t seen her in nearly a year and a half, thanks to COVID. She had become so thin and frail.

“What did you have for lunch today?” I asked one day when she had returned from work.

“Umm, did I have lunch? I’m not sure.”

On September 22nd, the day after her diagnosis, we celebrated my 36th birthday together. We sat across from each other in a restaurant booth. Just the two of us, out for dinner. She had become withdrawn and quiet. She had always been a good listener, but now the conversation was one-sided. I suspect she was afraid I’d notice her forgetting things, so instead she fell quiet, staring up at a TV screen instead of engaging with me. It wasn’t the 36th birthday I had hoped for, but still, I was happy to share it with her.

We hadn’t made brownies together since I was a kid, but if I knew then that my mom would soon lose her ability to make brownies and leave a little extra batter in the bowl for me, I would have asked her to make me one last batch for my 36th birthday. Even if I hadn’t noticed it as a kid, I realize now that brownies had been her small gesture of love.

Her neurologist prescribed Donepezil, a dementia medication that, as my family and I anticipated after reading about its lack of effectiveness, didn’t stop or slow her cognitive decline.

“You need to take one each night before you go to bed,” I explained as I handed her the first dose and a glass of water.

“Wake me up if you feel dizzy or notice any other symptoms.”

She looked at me, her beautiful blue eyes wide open. I sensed that she felt worried as she took a sip of water, tilted her head, and swallowed the pill. I had never seen my mom scared before. She had always seemed so strong and emotionless when I was a kid—mysterious and reserved—I never knew what she was thinking or feeling.

Watching her go from a strong, independent woman to a helpless and childlike one was not what I had imagined for our relationship, at least not now. I thought we’d have more time to get to know each other as two adult women.

I wrote her medication schedule on a piece of notebook paper and taped it to the wall in the kitchen, hoping she’d be able to follow it after I left.

She had Post-it notes scattered on the kitchen counter and her desk in the den. Phone numbers, appointment reminders, birthdays. She had asked me to gather everyone’s birthdays—my aunts, uncles, cousins, my cousins’ children, and my niece. I turned the pages of the large desk calendar I had bought to help her keep track of the days, jotting down our family’s birthdays. I also added all the dates to my digital calendar, so I could remind her from afar.

Over the next few days, my mom and I sorted through brown shopping bags that she had filled with mail, mostly junk. It was strange; she had never hoarded mail before. She kept forgetting what we had already sorted, dragging out the process. The next day, while she was at work, I did the rest myself—filing the important stuff and dumping the rest into white garbage bags, taking them out to the bin before she came home from work. Before she could sort through them again.

I never thought I’d be losing my mom to Alzheimer’s in my 30s—I suspect she didn’t either. As our roles have slowly reversed, I feel like I’ve become a worried mother (Is she eating enough? Is she happy? Are her caregivers doing a good job?), without ever giving birth.

During a recent visit, my mom laughed, then teased me like a child might—sticking out her tongue, making a little slurping noise, and smirking as she opened her mouth to let me spoon-feed her ice cream and raspberries. I was feeding her for the first time. I held the spoon there for a second, unsure if she was refusing or just being funny.

I wonder if my small gesture had made her feel loved in the same way our brownie ritual had been a sign of love for me. Have I become the giver of small sweetnesses, the one smoothing over life’s rough edges?

*

When I was a kid, my mom often kept a plate of brownies on the kitchen counter, covered with aluminum foil. She ate one a night before bed. She’d bake them on the weekend and slice them into small rectangles, ready to eat throughout the week.

She worked a lot, and I had always wished I could spend more time with her. When I visited my girlfriends’ homes after class in middle and high school, and their mothers were home, I felt jealous, but I was also curious. I wondered what it was like to have a stay-at-home mom instead of a working one.

But nowadays, I realize that she taught me, by example, to do what I want and not what society expects of me. It’s possible to be independent and self-reliant and a mother, wife, and maker of brownies—if that’s what you want.

She’s still physically here, but fading more each day. When I lick the sweet and salty, chocolatey mix from the wooden spoon these days, it’s not just comfort. It’s a way of mothering myself, of holding onto a version of her—and of me—that I never want to lose.