The word tablespoon is worn off my Mother's measuring spoons; this is another indicator of how much my Mother cooks. This love language of hers is shared homemade generosity and measured in heaps.
The tattered loved-worn cookbook is filled with tried and true recipes stuffed with sweet mementos, marriage announcements, prayer cards, thank-you notes, Valentine's poems that she penned to my Father, and newspaper clippings of this or that about the family. The cookbook diary and the recipes of our lives are mixed in between the pages that whip up memories of what we have done in the days and years past and what we dined on throughout our lives.
Opening the cookbook, I can smell the aroma of childhood birthday cakes and fried chicken picnics by the creek; I can see the hand that turned sorrow into joy and taste the events that have marked our days. We have the ingredients to make a feast with our lives and the choice to substitute spice for that which is bitter. I grew up on second-helpings of home cooking, believing every bite was good.
Photo: My Mother's 1950s cookbook.
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