In Life and In Death
Ever since her mother died, Sakura started obtaining the habit of cooking.
She used to hate it so much –not because she couldn't stand the action, but because it reminded her so much of what she never wanted to end up like.
She had never wanted to end up like her mother.
Cooking made her feel so weak. Like she was proving the stereotype that women needed to be in the kitchen, like if she would cook then it would commit her to being a stay-at-home mom forever. Like the kitchen was suddenly going to grow shackles and confine her in there for eternity.
Her mother used to be one, and Sakura remembered she would always wonder as a little girl if she would be like her mother too. She remembered not wanting to, wanting to explore the world and play football and go out and make a name for herself. Not to be confined to staying behind four walls, while the men went out to experience the world and all its offers.
That was actually one of the reasons she had begged her parents to sign her up for the ninja academy – not that she ever told them that.
But as she looked back now, Sakura found that her fears were ridiculous. Becoming a strong, independent woman had nothing to do with whether she cooked or not, but it had everything to do with self respect and confidence, the latter being extremely lacking throughout her younger teen years. It had everything to do with working hard and not letting anything drive you away from your goals, and doing everything you could to achieve your dreams.
So when her mother died, the mother she had loved so much despite wanting to be different from, she longed to find something that would connect her to her mother. Some common ground, because they had to have something in common, right? They were mother and daughter after all. And Sakura convinced herself that even if they didn't have a hobby that met the eye, she would search for something her mother loved doing and hope that she could learn to as well.
And she found that one thing – cooking.
After the I-can't-step-a-foot-in-my parents'-house phase, which lasted a few months after both her parents passed away, Sakura finally had the nerve to enter. Truly enter, not just linger in the doorway awkwardly. It was hard and she had cried, truly sobbed, while starring at old photographs of a little girl and two parents, at her father's newspaper and tea mug just sitting there at the kitchen table, at her mother's worn out Pride and Prejudice book resting, untouched on the coffee table, and at the pack of cigarettes that had led to both their deaths.
She had burned the cigarettes.
Eventually she had stumbled upon her mother's recipe book, brown and worn with papers sticking out everywhere. Skimming through the pages, she noticed the chocolate-cake recipe her mother always made for her birthday, the chicken noodles her father loved, and the ramen noodles she had always made when Naruto came over for dinner.
She couldn't bring herself to look at it any longer, so instead she took it home, and along with that, taken it upon her to try out different things in the book.
And one recipe became two and two became ten and ten became a habit. Once a week or two, she would take it upon herself to try to cook something out of her comfort zone (meaning not only scrambled eggs and half-burnt toast), something that her mama used to make.
And as fall turned into winter and winter into spring and summer, Sakura cooked and remembered and cherished those memories. She learned a thing or two about her mother, such as the fact that she loved cinnamon (seriously, she put that in everything), and a thing or two about herself. Such as the fact that she loved cinnamon too.
On those nights when she cooked, she would invite team seven over for dinner. If it seemed weird to them, they didn't say a thing. She suspected they were curious from the looks Sai and Kakashi would share across the room, the kicks Sasuke gave Naruto under the table, or Sasuke's lingering gazes, but they didn't say a thing and for that she was grateful.
Through these recipes, Sakura learned more things about her mother than she did in her lifetime. From her feathery handwriting that was never in anything but purple pen, to her drabbles across the page that noted to add cinnamon because cinnamon makes everything so much better. From paragraphs about how Sakura was growing up so fast to sad notes about her husband withering away slowly due to his lung cancer and how she was afraid he would die and leave her and Sakura alone.
Ironically enough, she was the one who died first and left them all alone.
Her mother's cookbook became her most cherished possession, holding too much sentimental value to put into words. It was more than the recipes: it was the purple pen and the random entries and the love for cinnamon. It was the worry and the love that seemed to reach her through the paper, through the ink, through the infinite sea that now separated them forever.
And soon enough, Sakura Haruno came to the understanding that she knew more about her mother in her death than she did in her entire life.
And perhaps, of all things, that was her biggest regret.