Detour Productions

September 8, 2011. Tonight I wanted a recipe to include garlic, olive oil, and broccoli, and thought to call my mom for suggestions. Then refrained. I knew her response. “Search the Internet.” And I missed that ol’ recipe box, with the worn hinges, and packed-in 3″x5″ cards that had handwritten recipes and vanilla-extract and oil stains.

I grew up a finicky eater, and the most calamitous cook among five siblings. Yet I’d always bellied up ravenously to favorites like Grandma’s delicious cream soups and Mom’s homemade chili. ‘Twas during college days I began to love the art of cooking, and I oft called home for beloved recipes.

For cooking or for baking, whether Mom or Dad answered the phone, they were able to reference my request and read it to me. I envisioned the recipe cards they held, and my mom’s handwriting.

Over the years they read recipes for chili, pasta salads, cakes and cookies, spaghetti sauce, and hotdishes — as we say in Minnesota; folks outside the state call them casseroles.

I jotted the recipes on scraps of paper. During more organized times, I tapped them into a computer file — and saved them on computers that eventually crashed.

One time Mom suggested a cream of green bean soup recipe, that I didn’t take down. As much as my palate had evolved to be open for new tastes, I was still finicky about green beans.

Sometimes Mom read recipes then shared twists she made. I added twists of my own. Yet there was comfort in the base “family recipe.”

Comfort I didn’t appreciate till lately. Somewhere in the whir of my needing recipes, Mom no longer referenced the recipe box to find the card that may or may not have been in place.

“Go online and I’m sure you’ll find a recipe,” became her response. She was right. I could find recipes there. An infinite amount. Yet I had to link through several references to seek recipes I might like.

Last time I talked to Mom, I recalled Grandma’s homemade cream soups. I could actually taste them, like a dream. “Do you have Grandma’s soup recipes?” I asked.

“No,” Mom replied. “But you can go online …”

Yes, yes, I thought, I could go online to find soup recipes, yet not Grandma’s soup recipes. Would I ever taste Grandma’s soup again?

I wonder if Mom still has that recipe box. The one she doesn’t refer to anymore. If so, I’ll ask her to send it to me.

And all the base recipes that I grew up on, will be at my fingertips. Maybe even the cream of green bean soup. Perhaps it’s one Mom had jotted down while Grandma recited it, and holds the secret behind all Grandma’s delicious cream soups.

March 19, 2011. It’s the wee hours of my niece Cedar’s birthday. She’s thirteen.  I’ll want to give her a call later. And I’ll want to tell her how I remember when she was a little bundle in my arms.

I warn myself now, to refrain. There’s a certain phase in which kids don’t want to hear about being “bundles” or babies, and that phase is most strong when kids are teens. I recall my own days being a kid when adults would begin “Why, I remember when you were a ….” and I’d tune out their words, subconsciously, as I smiled back at them. That’s when adults were most alien to me, telling me about knowing me when I was a baby, or standing only “so high.”

Back then I didn’t fathom that one day I’d be an auntie saying those words. Yet here I am. And it’s Cedar’s birthday. I already feel the tightness in my throat. “You’re 13? Why, I remember when ….”

When I first met her.  She was tiny and sleeping.  I’d arrived from Chicago to Minneapolis late at night, to my brother’s house. As soon as I’d stepped in I asked that he introduce me to her. He brought Cedar to me, such a tiny thing, and I took her in my arms and said little else to my brother than “Goodnight.”

My brother and sister-in-law went to bed, and I held little Cedar for hours, and sang to her, and rocked her, and fell asleep with her in my arms. She didn’t wake till after 6 a.m., the latest in the morning she had ever slept  so far.

I know I’ve already told her that story, aware even at the time that she would naturally put up a buffer and consider me an alien adult for speaking so.

Yet I also know, when the time is right, Cedar will recall those words and appreciate them.

So, will I refrain from telling her another “baby Cedar” story when I talk with her later? Maybe …. Maybe not.