Love in a Chocolate Cake

Apr 23

6 min read

106

How do you show love to the special people in your life? Has someone shown you love in an unforgettable way? My beautiful grandmother left a legacy of love that I still feel today, many years after her death. The following essay was my first published piece and a tribute to her. Originally it was written as an assignment for a college writing class and has a unique format, it is a braided essay. I have altered it a few times over the years and am sharing it with you now. I hope it brings your heart joy today.

Love in a Chocolate Cake

My grandmother died in October of 2011 and I inherited her cookbook collection. This small set of outdated cookbooks from decades past may have seemed insignificant to some. In fact, it was a group of books that you might see at a yard sale or forgotten in the dusty corner of a used bookstore, but to me, the books were priceless treasures. They symbolized who my grandmother, Doris Audrey, was: sweet, caring, and full of nervous energy. She was the grandmother who never forgot a birthday or anniversary and was the happiest when her three daughters and family surrounded her, a grandmother who loved the color pink, flowers, and a juicy hamburger.

The cookbook collection sat unopened in a large cardboard box marked "Grandma" in big, black Sharpie letters, in my closet. My aunt had bestowed the books on me because she knew that Grandma and I had shared a love of cooking and we had bonded over planning family dinners. It took several months for me to open the box. I hid it from sight because I knew when I removed the lid I would be opening a memory and a wound from losing her. I was not quite ready for the emotional journey that would take me on.

New research reveals that your ancestor's lousy childhoods or excellent adventures might change your personality, bequeathing anxiety or resilience by altering the epigenetic expressions of genes in the brain.--Dan Hurley

My grandmother loved to cook. She was quite accomplished at it and would host family gatherings every few months. My aunts, uncles, cousins, and their families would drive a great distance to attend her dinners. Grandma and my grandpa, Shelby, would bring out long tables and folding chairs, and there was always a designated "kids table." She would cover them with cloth tablecloths, not the cheap plastic type, and would place vases of fresh flowers as centerpieces, usually roses from Grandpa's garden. Grandma would cook up a storm in her tiny, un-airconditioned kitchen. In summer months she always made heaping bowls of the most amazing potato salad. After dinner, we would sit on her front porch, catching up with each other while eating homemade pecan pie and ice cream.

When the weather turned cool, the dinners were moved indoors. No matter when you dropped in for a visit, Grandma's table was ready and inviting. I inherited her love of table linens and beautiful place settings and I have my own collection now. Each time I decorate my table, I step back and think of how she would have approved of it.

Like silt deposited on the cogs of a finely tuned machine after the seawater of a tsunami recedes, our experiences and those of our forebears are never gone, even if they have been forgotten. They become part of us, a molecular residue holding fast to our genetic scaffolding. The DNA remains the same, but psychological and behavioral tendencies are inherited.--Dan Hurley

One day, quite spontaneously, I felt ready to open the box containing the cookbook collection. As I turned the yellowing pages I could smell that smell, the one from her kitchen: lemons and thyme, brown sugar and vanilla together in one intoxicating memory. I laughed when I read some of the recipe's ingredients–words like "oleo" and "lard." I cried when I realized these were not just any cookbooks, they were part of her. Her doodling on the back covers of the books, squiggles, and lines connected to circles, triangles, and squares with curly cues; her annotations. Comments like "Good!" "Needs more sugar!" and "Don't make again!" were written next to recipes–hundreds of them, directions for meals that she made from her heart.

My favorite recipe book is a one-subject blue notebook with fraying edges and a spiral binding that Grandma had filled with recipes clipped from newspapers and magazines and meticulously taped onto white, lined pages separated by subject. Pie recipes came first, followed by "Supper Meals," then "Cookies," "Candy," and "Miscellaneous," all written in her small, nervous cursive. It was her self-made book complete with notes, doodles, and sketches of pie slices, wheels, chairs, her name, and in bold print, the name of a street where she had lived for more than three decades. Further investigation revealed menus she planned for family dinners, lists of names of those who would be invited, random phone numbers, and a recipe entitled "Punch for 50 People," where she had worked out a long division problem. As I turned the pages of those cookbooks I wept, laughed, and hurt so deeply–a pain that seared me from the inside. I realized that she was gone and could never again be, and what I had left could in no way replace her warm smile, her hugs and kisses, her adoration of family, and her genuine love.

Each book that I opened was like crawling through a window into the life of someone I had lost and I was eager to see what messages she had left me on the pages of those cookbooks. But then it hit me hard, this book collection was part of her legacy. I know people who think of themselves as important; they talk in lofty terms about the legacy they will leave behind when they are gone. To them, being remembered after death is equally as important as living each day fully.

My grandmother was not wealthy or connected, and I am sure she was not worried about an ambiguous idea like "legacy," and yet with a simple collection of well-worn books she had left the largest and most impressionable gift of all: her recipe for love. This love which had no zeros after it and no titles of importance was the true inheritance that I received from her. With this gift came no strings or expectations, just a desire to be loved similarly.

New insights in the field of epigenetics reveal that traumatic experiences in our past, or our recent ancestor's past, leave molecular scars adhering to our DNA. Jews whose great-grandparents were chased from their Russian schtels; Chinese whose grandparents lived through the ravages of the Cultural Revolution; young immigrants from Africa whose parents survived massacres; adults of every ethnicity who grew up with alcoholic or abusive parents–all carry with them more than just memories. The mechanisms of epigenetics underlie not only deficits and weaknesses but strengths and resiliencies too.--Dan Hurley

As I grow older I seek to instill in my children the same love and thoughtfulness that passed to me, Grandma Moore's recipe for love. I placed those special cookbooks–memory books–in my kitchen, and each time I prepare a recipe from one of them for my family I think of my grandma, and I connect with her across space and time. I feel her presence there: watching, smiling, and her love, reflected in a chocolate cake.

Works Cited

Hurley, Dan. “Grandma's Experiences Leave a Mark on Your Genes.” Discover Magazine, 17 April 2020, https://www.discovermagazine.com/health/grandmas-experiences-leave-a-mark-on-your-genes. Accessed 11 April 2013.

Grandma Moore's Chocolate Cake

Cake:

2 C. Flour

2 C. Sugar

Mix and set aside. Then, bring to a rapid boil:

1 stick oleo (butter)

½ C Crisco Oil

1 C. Water

4 T. Cocoa Powder

Pour this mixture over the flour and sugar, and blend well. Next, stir in the