Let Them Eat History
First copyright – 1931.
Newspaper clippings of Paul Harvey articles slid between the thick, yellowed pages.
A postcard dated 1969 and addressed to my mother before her last name was the same that mine used to be.
The Searchlight Recipe Book.
The binding is almost off the black and red cover and the paper tabs denoting recipe categories are torn and rugged.
This was first my grandmother’s cookbook.
And then it was my mother’s.
And now it is mine.
“Who will get this cookbook next in our family, Momma?” London asked.
“I guess you’ll have to take turns with it,” I answered, hopeful that one day my girls would want to pass around this future-archaic chunk of family history.
I like books.
And I like old books.
But this book, I like even more.
Because it is so much more than an outdated cookbook that reminds the reader that appetizers should always be served with linen cocktail napkins.
Scratched and scrawled on blank pages and throughout the margins of this handheld antique are my grandmother’s words.
Her thoughts.
Her hopes.
Her life.
In fading pencil and crooked cursive.
Recorded at Thanksgivings and birthdays and Christmases when this book was cracked open and food was offered and fellowship shared.
She wrote about the people joining her at the feast table.
And the people who could not make it that year.
1957 – Vonnie, Jack & Donnie Boy got home Dec. 17 for Christmas . . . it breaks my heart to see them leave.
1967 – I sure am lonely and miss Mama so much. Seldom a day goes by that I don’t shed a few tears and want to talk with her.
1972 – Londa & Carl moved down here March 10, 1972. I never thought they’d leave N.Y. God does things in such a wonderful way!
From 1955 to 1985.
Thirty years.
Thirty years of cooking and serving and writing and loving and losing and cooking and serving.
I don’t think I have ever read my grandmother’s words spread randomly throughout the pages without tears of my own.
It’s funny –
how much my life looks like hers.
I think so much of my job as a mother is that of
Keeper.
Protector of Memories Past.
And so, today I pulled the Searchlight from the shelf.
I gathered our children around me.
I showed them photographs, weathered and worn, of my grandmother.
Mildred Elizabeth Lacey Norton.
Of whom so many of them share a piece of her name.
And then I opened the cookbook.
Graham Cracker Cake.
“That’s what we are going to make today,” I told them.
They happily smashed up an entire box of graham crackers.
They measured and poured and cracked eggs and mixed ingredients.
The recipe called for whipped cream as a topping.
We knew we could not substitute Cool Whip for a 1931 recipe.
And so we whipped cream into a frothy madness and spread it across the layers.
It was beautiful.
And tasty.
Like eating history.
Like being a part of all those years.
And all those scratchy stories
that helped to make me who I am
and that will inevitably help to shape them into what they will be as well.
10 Comments
Mommy2EandS
This is so cool. I wrote about the heritage in my cookbook also, although its a bit different from yours. Check it out here if you want: http://desperatemommy.tumblr.com/post/1033272145/…
Gretchen
That is so cool!! What an awesome thing to have and the little notes written in the cookbook! So cool!!! Makes me want to write in a cookbook. 🙂
Leanne Boone
Quite a tasty bit of history might I say. I thought it was yummy! I really like the fact that these cooking projects are on Wednesdays!
LaceyKeigley
Yes – Wednesday was handy for you.
But what if next week's recipe turns out — less tasty?
What then?
B.A.
wow, i have a dictionary my grandmother had, but she didn't write anything in it. this is so neat lacey.
LaceyKeigley
Thanks BA.
I think it is a really sweet heirloom.
Cindy
Beautiful!! I love what you did with the photos.
LaceyKeigley
Thanks!
A cool app on the new iPhone made those pictures so cool – see, an investment – right?
Elizabeth Birak
Beautiful. Your story reminds my great grandmother. She used to pray for my dad everyday when he was a teenager and gave him a Bible when he headed off to fight in Vietnam. She died before he came to know Christ as an adult and became a pastor, but she was the one who sewed the first seeds of faith in his life .
She was an assistant to Kathryn Kuhlman when she was younger and she had a Bible that was stuffed full of KK's sermon notes and other pieces of history. It got lost when passed down through the family and it breaks my heart that it's gone.
It's so important to hold onto the heritage and history of our families. I'm glad you have something so precious to pass on to your children.
LaceyKeigley
Thank you Elizabeth.
And isn't it sad and beautiful that your great grandmother was never blessed with knowing who your dad become?
It reminds me that I can not judge my children's future by their present.
Or my own, I guess.