“This is my pride and joy…This…is my grandmother’s cookbook.”

I was reading some of my old posts recently…specifically the ones related to cooking.

In 2005, I was angry and resentful about cooking. I was trying, for the first time, one of the recipes in the 15 minute cookbook that Eva had told me to buy. That year, 2005, was also the first year I cooked thanksgiving dinner for my in-laws. In 2006 I was starting to accumulate recipes, and totally freaking out because I didn’t have any kind of organizational system. How would I find things when I wanted to make them? How could I organize index cards with torn out magazine pages? What the hell do I do?

Laurel brought me her grandmother’s cookbook and put it in my lap. I burst into tears. Her handwriting was on the pages. The book was heavy and black and timeless. It screamed of providing something to the people that came after her, of caring enough to have it written down.

I had been struggling to understand how food = nurturing and love. This is something so essentially simple to the kitchen witches, it’s like they’re trying to explain water, it’s such a simple concept that I barely understand it, and every time I get glimpses of it, it makes me cry. (I’m crying now, just trying to explain it.)

That book, with its weight and density, speaks all the things I cannot explain. It speaks of being happy to come home to have dinner in the evening. It speaks of warm smells, and looking forward to being around the table. It speaks of someone that cares enough to make the things you like to eat…in fact, someone that will go out of their way to make something for you for no other reason than the fact that you like it, and they want to see you like it. It speaks of someone that enjoys watching you enjoy yourself. It speaks of all these things that I have never had.

But you see, I’d never known the value of what I missed until that moment, when that book landed in my lap. How could I? It’s like knowing how your life would have been different. It’s like Jack Skellington finding Christmastown. It’s like Harry Potter getting his first Christmas present. It’s like opening a window and smelling someone baking cookies for the first time in your life.

For a moment, there’s a wonder at the joy of it. Then the ramifications of that can sink in.

I am a lucky woman. I have people that love me, and I’m surrounded by kitchen witches who have wanted me to know the joy of cooking…and who understand this is so much more than yumminess, or a good nutritious dinner. This is Family, and Friends, and Nurturing, and Joy, and so many more subtle things that most of the world just takes for granted.

My past has carved me into a particular shape. But my friends have had something to say about that, and have done some reshaping of their own. I LIKE cooking now. It takes a lot of energy for me, and I can’t do it as often as I would like because of that energy…but when I do it, I do it because I want to do something nice, and I derive joy from it. And I’m a damn good cook too! So there!

I am blessed to have these people in my life. And I am blessed to have these moments, when the weight of a book can explain more to me than all the cooking lessons and recipes within it.

Thank you, Laurel.