What I found in a box of old cookbooks
My grandmother’s scrawl, my mom’s menus,
and a small case for handwriting.
I didn't realize an obsession of mine that started in kindergarten would someday feel almost obsolete.
One of my favorite parts of kindergarten was when my teacher, Mrs. Smith, would pull out the lined writing paper and we would practice writing our letters. Up to the top line for capital letters. To the dotted middle line for lowercase. Pages and pages of As, Bs, and Cs. Always with a freshly sharpened #2 pencil.
By third grade we had moved on to cursive. Another teacher, also a Mrs. Smith, would demonstrate on the chalkboard how to connect each letter to the next without lifting your pencil from the paper. I loved it. My granny had beautiful cursive that I wanted to emulate, so I spent hours at my pink bubblegum desk practicing loops and swirls on lined tablets.
The teen years brought note passing and the realization that everyone's handwriting was becoming distinctly their own. Who made the best capital Y with the loop on the bottom and who dotted their i's with a heart. Who wrote in perfect bubble letters and who had a messy scrawl.
Around middle school, I decided to master the double-loop G. This was not a casual undertaking. Two of my friends had already perfected the G I was striving for, and despite years of practice, when I look back through old journals, the elusive double-loop G doesn't start showing up consistently in my writing until college.
Even today, I’m still working on that G, and still slightly envious of theirs.
During our recent move, I unpacked box after box of cookbooks. Tucked among them was a small wooden recipe box hand-painted with flowers.
I lifted the lid and thumbed through recipe cards covered in my grandmother's tiny scrawl. Seeing her handwriting immediately brought her back to me.
Not just her love of cooking, but the way she sat at her laminate kitchen table every morning, working the daily crossword puzzle. The newspaper folded neatly into a square to reveal only the puzzle. Her pen filling in the little squares. A cigarette smoldering nearby in an ashtray. How no one ever beat her at Trivial Pursuit.
And in remembering the crossword puzzle, I could hear her laugh. I could feel her arms spreading wide open to pull me into the tightest hug.
A recipe card can hold a lot more than a recipe.
Reaching into the box again, I pulled out a spiral notebook. I flipped to the first page and in my mom's small left-leaning script, she had written:
Menu: Tuesday May 17, 1966, Cocotis's
Frozen Daiquiri's & Nuts
Tomato Juice Cocktail
Bar-B-Que'd Ham w/ glaze
Fresh asparagus w/ cream cheese sauce
Mashed potatoes & Butter
Jello Fruit Salad
Relish plate
Biscuits - butter - jam
Wine - milk - coffee
Chocolate pie
After dinner drink
Most likely it was the menu from one of the first dinner parties she hosted, just six months after marrying my dad.
For decades she continued filling those notebooks—the date, the guests, the menu, the occasion—from her early twenties through raising three children, through the passing of her parents, through grandchildren, and all the way until a few months before her own passing.
She wasn’t simply recording what she served. She was recording a life.
When I read those pages, I can see her at the front door, her smile and her laugh. "Come in, come in. What can I get you to drink?” The appetizers already on the table. Chips and pretzels tipped into a woven basket lined with a paper napkin. Condiments spooned into little bowls, never served in their containers.
Before guests arrived there was always a small undercurrent of stress, too. "Everyone out of the kitchen!" and "Who took my good scissors?" and "The guest bathroom is off limits!" But I'm grateful for every birthday, holiday, and ordinary family gathering she turned into an occasion. She had a gift for making people feel welcomed, and cared for, and important.
May 31st would have been my mom’s eighty-third birthday.
And while I can’t throw a birthday celebration for her, I am planning an upcoming one for her little sister, and I've already caught myself flipping through those notebooks for ideas. I'm fairly certain my mom’s carrot cake will make an appearance. (Hopefully my aunt isn't reading this and spoiling the surprise.)
I've noticed lately how many of us are reaching for things we can hold again. Printed photographs. Vinyl records. Paper books. Handwritten notes. Even landline phones are trying to make a come back.
Maybe it's because so much of life now lives on a screen. So much of what we communicate is typed.
Don't misunderstand me. I love my computer. I earn my living sitting in front of one.
But holding my grandmother's recipe cards and my mom’s menu book reminded me that handwriting preserves something typing letters can’t: a person's rhythm, their quirks, the particular way they moved through the world.
In photography there's a saying: Print what you want to preserve. I agree with that. But I would also add: Write down what you want remembered.
It doesn't have to be a memoir or pages of daily journaling. Maybe it's a favorite recipe written on a card for a friend or a notebook of dinner party menus. Maybe instead of a text, it's a note dropped in the mail.
As for me, I'll be writing down more recipes. More notes in the mail. And finding more ways for the tangible, the hand crafted, the human, to live alongside the digital.
And perhaps still trying to perfect that G.
Cheers,
Carrie
