On my bookshelf sits a small metal box, rusted with age, barely larger than an index card. The outside is adorned with brightly colored flowers. Stuffed inside, many pieces of paper each covered in its own unique handwriting, signifying the author. Each manuscript is a carefully constructed set of instructions-a recipe.
…
In 1964, my grandmother was a member of a garden club that gathered each week for afternoon tea. Southern mothers dressed in hats and gloves with small children crawling around their feet. My mother says my grandmother often propped her feet in an adjacent chair to ease the swelling in her ankles. In August of that same year, my grandmother died giving birth to her sixth baby. My mother was only nineteen, the oldest child.
Though all of this occurred long before I was born, the echoes still exist within my life. I grieve with my mother for all she has lost. Thinking how our relationship was fraught with the hostility of my teenage years but sings so sweetly now. I yearn for what I have missed in the absence of a doting grandmother who might have kissed my curls each time we met.
Occasionally, when I feel nostalgic for the flavors of my childhood, wishing my mother was not half a continent away, I grip the now fragile box in my hands, its beauty mottled with stains. The hinges creak as I lift the lid, exposing the yellowed parchment it contains. I grasp one of my favorites, though truth be told, I don't need to read it to know what it contains. It did not come in the box. I placed it there. A memory of my own to keep safe.
Kneeling on a tall kitchen stool, an apron wrapped around my body, I lean against my mother. The scent of her powder fills my nose, and I see the gold and white tin that always sat on her dressing table. In front of me is a white bowl with yellow flowers waiting to be filled. In her place, I wrap an apron around the small body that leans against me. I repeat these steps in just the same way as her mother did before her.
Biscuits Two cups of flour sifted through my memories. Flowers always bring my mother to mind, and her garden that overflows with beauty. A master of soil, giving life to the dirt. Her skill at coaxing little wisps of green to extend themselves into the world and form a bloom.
One tablespoon of baking powder to give rise to the new matriarch so young in the making. At the hospital, she was advised to tell her little brothers and sister that their mother was not dead and that she would eventually be coming home.
Two cups of sugar coat it they said, but she would not lie to them, saying they deserved the truth. A more honest woman would be hard to find, though I cannot claim to be an impartial judge.
Six tablespoons of butter, cold comfort found in condolences as their family struggled to right itself from such a loss. My mother stepped into the role of mother to her siblings.
One teaspoon of salt and pepper now, her hair no longer the deep brown of my childhood. Her eyesight is fading. She struggles to see the life those blooms she tended so carefully have created. Now unable to cook with her grandchildren.
Three-quarters cup of milk of the mother, a protection passed on through the generations. A singular relationship that cannot be replaced with another. … I watch my son, eager to taste the soft crumb cooling on his plate. I am grateful for the lifetime of love I have experienced. Yet, I fear this exact moment of loss when my mother will not be a phone call away. Wondering who will be there to give me instructions in her absence. When my worries feel too great, I look to this timeworn vessel put together by the lunching ladies, handed to my mother in her grief, when nothing else could be said. When nothing could ease the burden of death, they gave her-and in turn me-what my grandmother could not. They gave all they could offer: a recipe for life.
