Hearts Connected by a Cookbook

I don't recall exactly how I came into possession of my grandmother's cookbook. Or, even more mysterious, how it is that having moved no fewer than thirteen times in my life, it managed to find a ride to each of my new homes -- a feat that even several perfectly good sofas were not able to accomplish.

It is the only possession of my grandmother's that I own, and, as it turns out, it is the only thing I would have wanted.

It was never given to me, I know that much. I suspect my mother most likely left it behind the time she gave up her apartment for my two small children and me when we needed a place to live. The irony that two hungry teenage sisters came with the bargain is not lost when I recall that it was the tattered red and white gingham cookbook I pulled out of the cupboard every evening to cook for the five of us. Even during those times when the cupboards were almost bare, the sight of grandma's cookbook standing alone in the big old white cupboard was somehow comforting.

I remember the cookbook resting on another shelf years ago: I'm 12 years old. I'm sitting in the kitchen of my grandmother's apartment located upstairs from our own, in an old, converted two-story Victorian house. Grandma has cancer and is dying. Her bedroom is adjacent to the kitchen where I sit at the kitchen table doing my homework. The door to my grandmother's room is closed. My grandfather, my mother, and my older sister and I take turns sitting at the table outside grandma's bedroom door to listen for her. If she calls out, I am to summon grandpa who sits alone watching T.V. in the living room down the hall. Located on a small countertop shelf just behind me is a small collection of cookbooks. Grandma's red gingham loose-leaf cookbook stands among them.

I smile at the corny 1950's illustrations today as I turn the brittle pages of the aging Better Homes and Gardens New Cookbook. A photo of a "modern" kitchen is startlingly similar to the tiny kitchen my grandmother had in the house she lived in before moving upstairs from us. I recall kneeling on a chair in the small breakfast nook frosting Surprise Cupcakes that grandma had baked. I was about 5 years old. Grandma showed me how to carefully cut a hole in the bottom of the cupcake, fill it with frosting, and cleverly seal the hole back up with the removed disk of cake. I remember being thrilled to learn this delectable secret. Looking back I realize the truer thrill was spending time with the kindest woman I ever knew - inhabiting grandma's world for a few hours, so peaceful, so different from my own.

My grandmother died six months after she was diagnosed with cervical cancer. I never had a chance to ask her, and she never spoke it, but I grew up knowing she had a passion for baking. I recall Easter dinners at grandma's house, her table adorned with regal-looking cakes in the shape of lambs complete with coconut "wool." Many days we would come home from school to find grandma at our house just pulling warm brownies from the oven or putting the finishing touches of frosting on a devil's food cake. Her sunroom at her house was always stocked with homemade marzipan in the shape of tiny fruits, which we gladly devoured during visits. Befittingly, the one job she held in her life before marrying my grandfather was working in a bakery.

Gently turning more pages I come across dozens of "clip and save" recipe pages that grandma had cut from Better Homes and Gardens magazine and added to sections of the cookbook. Some of the additions date back to 1963. The most recent was dated 1968, a year before she died. One of the recipes is for Cherry Mallow Pie. Another, dated June 1965, is for Lemon Crisp. Another dated January 1964 is a recipe for Lemonade Pudding. A decadent-looking creation perched atop an ornate cake stand is another recipe that caught her fancy, called Bridge Meringue Torte. Some added recipes were published by Kraft Foods, featuring pictures of products that now no longer exist such as "Miracle Margarine" and "Old English Pasteurized Process Cheese Spread." I even uncover evidence as to the possible origin of my enduring penchant for peanut butter when I notice clip and save recipes for Peanut Butter Muffins and Chocolate-Peanut Bars.

There was a time when making a perfect meringue or a flaky piecrust was of concern to most women. At the back of the cookbook I find a 26-page booklet, which has also been added to the cookbook entitled, "Betty Crocker's 'Frankly Fancy' Foods." Published in 1959, it is a handbook on how to give a party, complete with a diagram of how to correctly set a buffet table. For a late party, the book suggests that the hostess invite guests at 9 p.m. "for an evening of games or television or simple conversation." Is it me, or did life seem simpler in 1959?

But the cookbook is missing something. I search in vain to find a something personal from this gentle woman who bequeathed to me the art of creating joy out of simple flour. I scour each page to find, perhaps, a note to me - the granddaughter to whom she taught the love of baking. The granddaughter she blessed with the label, "the thoughtful one." A notation, perhaps. An underline. An added ingredient. But I find no written words created by the turn of her own gentle hand.

I want to know more about the passion we share, and perhaps those we didn't. I want to thank her for baking those surprise cupcakes with me, the after-school brownies, the lamb cakes, and the marzipan.

I want to thank her for the cookbook.