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Memories
Mom's cookbook

       I remembered the
occasions that some dishes
were used and some of the
tradition and my response to
some of her foods.  I was kid
who did not yet appreciate
the educated palate she had.  
Occasionally, I pull out a
recipe I remember and tackle
it. I am sad to say over the
years a couple of the recipes
disappeared, having been
stuck back in place, probably
less securely than they
should have. “Ma Bell’s
Snicker doodle” is one of
them. It was a coffee cake
that just melted in my mouth.
No recipe I have found has
done that one justice.  Or
maybe I am expecting a
miracle.
      I am sitting here with the innards of my mother’s
personal cookbook. This is the one full of the recipes she
collected over the years. The recipes she made her own,
her signature dishes. Mom died when I was 16 and the small
loose leaf notebook was suddenly in my possession.

      I never claimed the book as mine. It continued to
belong to her.  I did not put it on a podium as a family
bible might be. (That did occur to me)  I used to read it
as a text. Sometimes I would open it up just to remember
her; see her notes and the old aged and stained papers.
Hear her voice in her written word; I also would hear the
voices of the friends who had passed on a recipe she
valued. Their handwriting is so clearly part of the
personalities she communed with.

       A couple of years ago, I
came to accept that the book was
failing. Collapsing. The pages
were beginning to get too
brittle. The cover of the old
loose leaf that school notebook
blue fabric and then covered
with a plastic contact-paper was
tearing and peeling off. Somehow
mom’s spirit let go enough for
me to do what had to be done to
not lose it altogether. I
removed the pages of the book,
carefully unfolded the old
newspaper and magazine
clippings, and placed them in
acid free archival quality
protective pages. Somehow I see
her long fingers gliding over
them still. The recipes
preserved. She took hold again.
It still belongs to her.