Bob asks me the other day where this hand written recipe came from. He found it on the kitchen floor. It was my mom’s recipe for a nut cookie, in her handwriting. There are a couple of her recipes tucked into an old cookbook, also hers, sitting on the cookbook shelf. I haven’t taken out any books from that shelf in ages…. but there was this recipe sitting on the floor, all yellowed with age and stained with finger and food smudges.. it must be at least 40 years old, if not more. The only reason I can think of for that recipe to be there was mom’s way of telling me to make these ‘Nut Puffs’ for Christmas. I put the recipe on the counter with a firm resolve to make them… and days go by. This morning when I come down to put the dogs out, the timer buzzer on the oven is ringing… what? no one even used the oven yesterday, there was no reason to set the timer. It didn’t make sense until I finally made those Nut Puffs today, put them in the oven and set the timer…. then it hit me, I’m sure it was my mom making sure I bake today. I just took the first batch out of the oven.
This will be a hard Christmas for me…. you see it was 10 years ago when my mom’s cancer came back and at this point in time she was in Hospice. We tried to have Christmas for the kids in spite of what we were feeling. My sister’s family basically moved in for several weeks, so they could be near because we were told mom could go at any time. It was a holiday of running back and forth to the nursing home, wrapping gifts for the kids and trying to be brave. She was comatose, heavily sedated and wouldn’t have known us or the grandchildren anyway. Mom made it through the holidays passing away in the wee hours of January 2nd. It doesn’t take a recipe or a batch of cookies to remind us of her. Ten years is a long time, but I think of her almost every day and this year even more so… we have her cookies.
Recently:
- Continuing Chaos
- what used to be the shower
- …and so the demolition begins
- Introducing……..
- Home for the Holidays
- It’s coming… the Holidays are coming!
- Artful Weekend(s)
- A Walk in the Garden
- Catch a Falling Star
- Dog Days?
Comments
This entry was posted on Saturday, December 20th, 2008 at 11:29 pm and is filed under Family. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
I think you are right….she wanted you to make the cookies. I am glad you did.
I think of my Mom daily too! For me it’s been six years this Christmas when we told my Mom I was pregnant. Our little boy is five now and never knew his grandmother. God Bless!