Handwritten recipes stir up powerful memories of past
They’re threadbare and fading and some of the dishes I don’t even like, but each Christmas I pull them out of storage and cherish the handwritten recipes my mother gave me so very long ago.
Each scrap of instructions is a portal back to when she was still with us, organizing our holiday menus, assigning grab-bag recipients and dropping not-so-subtle hints about what our father might leave for her under the tree.
As hectic as Christmas can be, quiet moments always seem to weave their way in, interrupting the chaos and stopping me in my tracks.
It’s as if nostalgia chases me, reminding me to put down the to-do list and remember that the holiday should be less about want and more about celebrating what we have. Because the clock is ticking more quickly these days.
I learned early on that Christmas Past has a way of meandering into Christmas Present, pausing the chaos and dimming the lights, as if to say, “Stop for a while and just be.”
In my teens, before I caught my pre-dawn bus for high school, I would sit on the sofa admiring the Christmas tree and reflecting on holidays gone by. Back then, the look back was silly and fun.
The time I’d asked for a book and received a whole box of them.
The Christmas Eve my dad worked late and my mother and all of us kids sat around a snowman candle singing carols.
The year – I think I was 10 – when I tried to become an entrepreneur by selling holiday cards to neighbors only to have to bring in my mom for math help because I couldn’t figure out the tax.
Today, nostalgia rides a wave of tears.
History, our personal history, is a huge part of holidays. It’s a huge part of everything. And the trinkets, the customs and the recipes have the ability to stoke those powerful memories.
So even though the holiday, coming at the end of the year, makes us forward thinkers, pondering what to make, what to buy, what to resolve to change, at some point it will hold up a mirror and make us look back.
The older we get, that reflection will bring both sorrow and joy.
In youth, our focus is on expanding, growing a career, a family and a household full of things. As we age, the pendulum swings back and we find ourselves learning to live with less and with loss.
Life is only a series a moments, today here, tomorrow a memory.
It is with a heavy heart and a light spirit that we celebrate the moments we’ve had, the people we’ve loved, the memories that are unique to our story.
For me one of those moments comes when I pull out my recipe box.
Of course I can find instructions for just about any kind of cookie online but I want to admire the originals, the hand-written timestamps, some of them defaced with flour and dough debris, that remind me how lucky I am to miss the people who are now gone.
Foremost among them is my mother’s recipe for powdered sugar cookies. She gave it to me when I was first married nearly 40 years ago.
I’ve made them almost every year since, at first because the cookies are delicious, lately more so because I want to spend a few hours in her presence again.
I have never been a collector and I think a natural part of aging is wanting to rid yourself of unnecessary things.
My siblings have kept some of my mother’s ornaments and pieces of her extensive nutcracker collection. But all I’ve hung onto are these recipes.
Each year, I take them out of the box and, though many are barely readable, I spend a few moments delicately admiring the flowery, absolutely perfect cursive.
And then I bake.
Often, as I’m mixing, I tear up knowing that she was thinking of me when she grabbed pen and paper to write down these very words — butter, flour, enjoy.
Her penmanship is a credit to her schooling. Like a lot of Catholic elementary school graduates, she earned good marks in handwriting while attending St. Bernard’s on the South Side.
She also was an avid reader. She admired the written word and must have strived to make hers as special.
Writing, physical writing, was once a source of pride for people.
Today, when most communications are electronic, a hand-written note, even on a scrap of typing paper, seems special, personal, fleeting. And a hand-written recipe, well, that’s a treasure.
What do I want for Christmas? Like a lot of people of a certain age, I want the intangibles.
Peace, kindness, good health and understanding.
And I want a few moments with lost loved ones.
In memory, in spirit, in writing. However I can get them.