My sister and I are creating new traditions, facsimiles of who we were once. People used to think we were twins--same haircut, height, and mannerisms. We grew apart, became different people. Still are, but we found a way to communicate that is at once reminiscent and on another hand completely foreign to us both.

Two days ago, I was at her house and we baked dozens of cookies. The kind my father liked, the kind my mother liked. Last week, my parents went over to her house and my mother and sister made candies. I was not able to make it, prior commitments I sometimes force on myself to keep an arms length with my family. My mother brought me back cherry cordials and lemon-flavored hard candies. I snacked on one while she told me about her day and how beautiful my niece, Lana, was.

It's one tradition that has lasted, making candies by hand as presents. I was in charge of buckeyes this year, the cyclopean truffle that is just peanut butter and chocolate. I morphed it to my tastes, to who I am these days. Added some tahini and a little flaked sea salt. I'll bring them to her house on Sunday. And I'll smile, knowing the centrifugal force of holidays, how it all comes full circle and then falls into place.

Tahini Buckeye Truffles

Ingredients:

3/4 cup tahini (or 1 1/2 cup tahini, as a substitute of the TB)
3/4 cup peanut butter (or 1 1/2 cup PB, as a substitute of the tahini)
1/2 cup butter, softened
1/2 cup cream cheese, softened
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
4 1/2 - 5 cups confectioner's sugar
8 oz milk chocolate, chopped
6 oz dark chocolate, chopped
1 TB sesame seed
1 teaspoon flaked sea salt

Directions:

First, prepare two pans with cooling racks for your truffles to rest on
In the bowl of a stand mixer, fitted with a paddle attachment, mix together your tahini, peanut butter, butter, cream cheese, and vanilla until well blended
One cup at a time, slowly pour in your confectioner's sugar with the mixer on its lowest setting. Add just enough sugar so that a crumbly dough forms
Roll out onto a work surface that is dusted with confectioner's sugar and knead a couple times to form a disc
Wrap disc in plastic wrap and allow to rest in the fridge for 15 minutes
When 10 minutes have elapsed, melt your chocolate either in a microwave or a double broiler (see author's note below)
Take disc out of the fridge and unwrap back on your sugar-dusted work surface
Pinch off about a 1/2 TB of the tahini mixture and roll in your hands to form a ball
Roll in your chocolate with a fork and allow to harden on the cooling rack
Sprinkle with a little sesame seed and salt
Repeat with remaining filling
Can be stored in a container for up to a week

Note: I gave two methods for melting chocolate here because I know people have their preferences (and their qualms). If using a double broiler, you're golden, but it may take a bit of time for the chocolate to melt, which is fine as the longer the dough stays in the fridge the better anyway. For the microwave option, only add 2/3 of the chocolate you are melting in the bowl and heat at 30-second increments, stirring between rounds. When that chocolate is melted, add your remaining 1/3 and stir vigorously to melt fully. This is a ghetto tempering trick I learned from Ina Garten.

I don't think I can ever love anything the way I love my mother. A bond that runs through my blood, a love that's almost spiritual. I think I left for California because I was afraid of that love, of that bond between us that was broken when I came out and repaired with thread and bits of Big League Chew. I think I'm always afraid of losing her, the way she lost hers when she was 14. I've at least got eight years on her, at least I've got text messages and phone calls. At least I've got her cheekbones and her temper, the way I jump to conclusions and take St. John's Wort for an acute and whispering dose of hereditary depression. And at least I have the memories of sleeping in the middle, of baths and her drawings. She's been sending me more and more momentos to remember her by, to keep the memory alive and tangible.

My mom's a Midwesterner through and through. Nosey and angry, bitter and prideful. She sends me care packages of coffee and candy, jars of jam and mustards. Nourishing boxes, care boxes. Curated boxes that remind me of home. She's a gothic novel, a southern gospel of the haunting romance of love. She's Catherine at the windowsill when she sends these boxes, boxes that scare me because I left her alone. Alone in a house too empty and filled with silence and cats.

I called her on Mother's Day and she and my father were visiting my brother in North Carolina. My voice cracked as I drove on the 8 West. I sipped coffee to burn my tongue so I could distract the tears from coming. I just missed her so much in that moment. And when the phone call ended and I got to work, I had enough distractions to keep me busy. It's only at night when I really miss her. The absence is like a migraine, though, dull and constant until there's something to trigger it. Light and sound, memories and scents. Peaches or cucumber-melon lotion. I avoid it all when I start to miss her.

Here's to Nancy and her hugs, her laughter and her sadness. Here's to Nancy, and the toffees she sent me and the times I'll never get back.