Memories of Love

The most vivid memories that resurface again and again often seem to include (at least) one of three things: music, scents or food. Have you ever smelled something and felt yourself transported back to a moment, a person, a place? Or heard an old song and remembered exactly where you were and with whom the last time you heard it? Or eaten a dish that reminded you of some cherished moment of your childhood?

My mother had a rather tragic childhood whose events colored much of her life. Fortunately, I discovered over the years that she did have some pleasant memories. They tended to have to do with food; particularly, her grandmother’s biscuits and gravy. When she talks about Sunday dinner and “Grandma’s biscuits and gravy,” you can see by her smile, and eyes that no longer see you, that she is transported to a time when she was young, innocent, and loved. A time when she could ask for another biscuit only so she could sop up every last bit of Grandma’s gravy, and it was given.

Unfortunately, a lot of her unpleasant memories also have to do with food, memories that explain why she makes sounds and faces of distaste at some of the dishes I make. She can still taste all of the foods she didn’t like when she left her grandma’s home to live with her godmother. Many of the foods I never ate as a child (but love as an adult) she never cooked because they awakened unsettling memories: memories of feeling unloved. For her, those feelings were substantiated by memories of tasteless (or repugnant) food prepared out of necessity only. The melancholy child and adult was unable to consider that it wasn’t a lack of love, perhaps, but rather an inability to cook that was the problem.

My mother insists she is not a good cook and that I do not get my skills from her (my skills are only that I can follow a recipe well and have dozens of cookbooks of which I make daily use). But every Easter when she cooks for my family, if she asks us what we want her to cook, we all ask for our favorite dishes that she makes: dishes that bring me back to a happy childhood. Memories of dinners she prepared nightly despite being a single mother who worked 9-5 and got up before me to make sure I had a warm breakfast on cold winter mornings, and a healthy, often warm lunch packed in my lunchbox. Memories of undying love.

And so, if I am a good cook, it is because I learned from my mother what I believe she learned from her grandmother: to cook with love.