There was a time in grade school where the assignment was: what is your favorite thing your mother (and it did say mother) makes for you, and how does she make it?

I very confidently wrote “mac cheese.”

How does she make it?

Step one: open box.

My mom got quite the kick out of it, reading what I had written in loopy script, describing more steps such as the opening of the cheese powder, the mixing, the serving.

When she got sick and I started having to do more things, I confidently volunteered to make dinner. I made mac cheese, but I did it backwards, just a little bit. Just a little bit, to add my own culinary flare. I put the milk in before the butter. “It’s better that way,” I bragged to my brain cancer addled mother. My little sister nodded sagely.

My mom glared at me, “how can it be better?” she asked.

I taught a man child to make mac cheese once. I’m not talking about anyone with any kind of diagnosable delay, I am talking about a fully grown man who’d been cursed with a mother had done everything for him. Step one, open box.

He kept trying to jump ahead, as if to show me he knew better than me. This infuriated me. First, he put the noodles in before the water had boiled. He sealed his fucking fate when he poured the cheese sauce into the lukewarm water as well, before I could stop him.

I almost killed that fucker. I was still smoking weed at the time, though, so instead I just laughed manically for a full ten minutes and then broke up with him.

Mac cheese is my daughter’s second favorite meal. The first favorite is ribs, but we don’t make that often. Mac cheese, though. She adores mac cheese, and I make it without milk altogether, now. It’s better with just a lot of butter.