There's a semi-pot-luck gathering of friends tonight and I'm supposed to bring dessert. One friend suggested last night that I bake something that Grandma used to make. So, angel food cake with chocolate whipped cream, easy enough. Except I have plans for the morning and will have to stop afterward for the ingredients, and by 1pm with one kid asleep in the car, who am I kidding, I'm not making anything today. I pull in to a bakery, one I notice all the time but hadn't considered as a place where I could go until now.
Two kids come in with me. Two kids who cannot hold still for more than three seconds, who cannot keep their fists from banging on glass display cases or from vibrating all over each other like possessed puppies. Two kids who want to interrupt me fifty times while I try to tell the bakery lady, who must surely be internally raising an eyebrow at my inferior parenting and generally unkempt appearance, that I would like, oh, geez, how many cookies. How many? One kid wants to return to the car to get paper and pencil to help me tally it up. The other wants to swing from the eaves and take a sledgehammer to the place, not necessarily in that order. I just want a moment's peace to count potluckers inside my head. I really want a cream horn for myself, to sneak once we're home, but I'm being good, so I don't ask for that. Just eighteen M&M cookies. And two chess pies.
I slide my bank card across the counter to the bakery lady. To prevent myself from crying, I joke, "We're having...a day." I sign the slip, pack the cartons into a tote. My day may be shit but damnit, I'll still remember my reusable bags.
"Would you like something for you?" The lady asks. "A little something on the house?"
She startles me. And the thing is, yes, I would like something! But I don't want to ask for something.
"You're not asking, I'm offering," she says. I give her what must be the most pathetic, defeated look ever, and admit, that yes, one little lemon sugar cookie really would be nice with tea later today. She slips me a little paper bag.
"Thank you." I say, really, really meaning it. "My grandmother passed away last night. This kindness is worth so much to me today." She says sympathetic things, I tear up. She doesn't know about the way this loss timed itself to hit right at the peak of the horrible PMS I've had since my third son was born, how impossible my children have seemed lately, how I feel like I'm constantly chasing my tail. "Bless you," I say, and for the first time since realizing I'm an atheist, I understand what it means to me, and how important that woman and I am to each other in that moment, how each of us is blessing the other.
My unruly children careen into things all the way out the door. One asks about the little white paper bag and I tell him that it's a cookie just for me that the lady gave me because she thought I needed some kindness. To my surprise, nobody begs for it.
The baby wakes up after his short car nap and won't go back to sleep, dashing my hopes of enjoying the cookie in peace. My tea goes cold and I accidentally leave the paper bag on the counter. Miraculously, nobody raids the package.
When I finally open the bag, I discover that there are two cookies. I cry, and suddenly feeling abundant, I share.
I took the boxes of recipes and put them on an empty shelf, high in a kitchen cabinet. Going through the cards inside would be a hefty undertaking and I didn't have the time. Later I would read them, decipher the handwriting, interpret pencil hidden by grease spatters.
More than a year later we moved, and the boxes moved with us, taking up residence in a corner of a pantry shelf too awkward for holding things I wanted to access regularly. There has still not been time to fix plaster or paint walls or hang pictures, all of which sit in boxes in the attic. No time for weekend visits to relatives in other states when you're walking with your head down, just trying to slog through each day. Certainly no time for those five plastic index card files. Maybe when the kids are all in school. A project for the future.
Another year, and I found myself opening one. Just one, let's peek inside. Maybe it will assuage the guilt of not visiting in two years, of never introducing her to my baby, of neglecting to print photos and put them in the mail.
The card stared me in the face:
Crab and Cream Cheese Dip
Recipe courtesy Commander's Palace
Printed, cut out, folded around an index card. Paperclipped to others, printed, cut out, folded around index cards. A box full of appetizers and soups. I remembered how they got internet service for the first time and she discovered the Food Network website. So many recipes! Such an amazing new passtime. Printed, cut out, folded around index cards. To make someday.
The second box was the same. And the third.
The fourth box, a white one, predated the internet. Magazine clippings for icings, carrot cakes, fruit pies. To make someday. One or two older, hand-written cards tucked in between. Nothing I recognized.
The fifth box, the big one. Did it contain lost family secrets? Or did it contain a package of blank index cards, an assortment of clippings? To file someday. To make someday.
This evening, my father, aunt, and uncle gathered and gave permission for her ventilator to be turned off. And for the second time today, I lost my grandmother.
I'm going to cook my way through the cards anyway. Why did I expect the boxes to be full of something else? I remember her enthusiasm for the bounty to be found on recipe sites, and it makes perfect sense that she (like me) would have been an avid clipper of labels and magazines. What was it that drew her to Emeril's Chowder of Love? What has she given me, and will it help me to find her again?
Three more months to see the butterflies at Lewis Ginter - we went today for the first time and hopefully we'll make it back at least a couple more before the exhibit closes on October 11.
We had an interesting interaction with a staff member while there. Our arrival was right around opening time, and when we entered the butterfly enclosure, a man was there sweeping up debris. The boys and I noticed a dead butterfly on the ground and asked if it were ok to handle it. I had been cautioning the kids against touching the delicate wings of the butterflies all around us and had hoped we could examine a dead one. No such luck; apparently they collect them. The staffer apologized and we showed him two other dead ones.
A few minutes later we came across another on the ground. One of the kids pointed it out, thinking it was alive, and I said something like "no, that one's done living," and then amended, "well, almost done living," when I saw that it was only mostly dead. The staffer heard me and apologized profusely. I think he imagined that I was upset over all the dead butterflies, either because of the mess or because my kids were being exposed to so much death.
"It's because they're insects and have such a short life," he explained.
"It's ok," I shrugged, "it's part of life."
"Yeah, it is!" he replied, seeming relieved. I felt this twinge of a need to convince him that not everybody is grossed out by dead bugs, or by death in general. Instead we talked about how the critters don't get to mate in their short lives due to lack of the proper host plants, since the butterflies are from different countries and it's not permitted to breed them. I hope he doesn't feel like our visit was in any way marred. Quite the opposite is true; we learned as many interesting things via the deceased butterflies as we did from watching their younger, more animated counterparts.
