Letters

The value of teaching children the skill of cursive handwriting has been the subject of debate for some time now. I am not joining that debate. I have an opinion, of course, but that is not what I want to write about...exactly.

It is obvious, by now, that I love pulling out yellowed cards and clippings from Bruce's mom's recipe box and paging through her many cookbooks. I like holding the handwritten notes and knowing that she held them too. Some of them are written in Mom's very neat and distinctive script. Others are hurriedly jotted down with a pencil--sometimes leaving out pertinent details.

These just-for-her notes are actually the ones that I enjoy the most. Reading them forms a picture in my mind of her sitting around a table having coffee in the basement of the church after services. I can imagine the scene so clearly. She quickly reaches back and grabs a pencil and a note card from the top of one of the Sunday school cupboards and then she writes. She chats and she writes. She laughs and she writes. I'm sure that Mom had no idea that a hastily scribbled note would become a part of a memory that would be shared and cherished.

Besides the many recipes cards and cookbooks that I received after Mom's passing, Bruce's dad has also shared special occasion cards, letters and even calendars that capture moments and memories written by Mom's hand. I love them all. I touch the words--sometimes tracing each letter slowly with my finger.

I have become so aware of how much this all means to me that I have begun writing actual pen-to-paper letters to my grandchildren. I gave the two older ones stationery and stamps for Christmas and they have written to me.They may not keep the letters that they receive from me--but then again they might. I'll keep theirs. I realize just how precious they are now--how their value will increase with each passing year.

I have also begun to write more of my recipes down as well. Sure, I could just type them up and put them into a file on my computer. That would capture the recipe so that the dish could be recreated--nothing wrong with that. But my handwritten recipe cards--like Mom's--are more like a story. I don't know what that story will be. It will be written in the hearts and minds of whoever holds it in their hands--and remembers.

Letters are among the most significant memorial a person can leave behind them.  ~Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Note: This cake, I have discovered, goes by several names including, "Barbara Mandrell's Pig-Lickin' Cake!" Yep.