My Grandmother's Recipe

This September take a moment to build some lasting memories for yourself and your children. September 12, 2010 is National Grandparents Day; make a phone call, write a letter, bake some cookies with a grandparent. Today in our hurried lives stop, take a breath and stand still in the moment. Shut off the television, log off of the computer, ignore your email, skip that kick boxing class, simply stand still . Take the hand of your child and put it in the hand of a grandparent, start a memory, build a legacy that will last forever. Teach your children to embrace those that have walked down the path of life ahead of us, a path we too one day, will tread down.


I can still smell the sweet scent of sugar cookies and coffee cakes wafting from my grandmother’s kitchen. Dashing to the door, mouth watering, I ran. There waiting for my arrival was my grandmother, wiping her hands on her apron before she hugged me. A chair would be waiting for me, pulled close to the counter, an apron draped over it’s back inviting me to tie it around my waist. After my hair was pulled back into a pony tail we would go to work. Like every other baking day, this time was set aside for just the two of us. At first I think it was the sweet reward that I knew would come with a glass of cold milk at the end of our days that drew me in. Later it would be the time we spent kneading the dough and weaving the fabric of our lives that kept me coming. Through my awkward teenage years, well into my young adulthood, I kneaded and sometimes cried with her on baking day. I watched her hands become frail and her energy fade, yet we never missed a baking day.

I can close my eyes this very moment and taste those sugar cookies. Today I use her exact recipe, measure for measure, yet they have never tasted as delicious as when we baked them together. Standing in a kitchen miles away from my grandmother’s house, years separated from the girl I was, I bake those cookies in search of her. I cherish those memories I built perched on that kitchen chair beside her. I could not be who I am today without having spent those moments with her making cookies. I realize now, years after her passing, that her recipe card did indeed contain the proper ingredients and measurements, but that her love was the most important ingredient of all. I bake with my children, this very recipe, as they bake it now with my mother, their grandmother and each time a healthy amount of love is thrown into the mix.


“I will never know what it is like to be another race or gender. But I, and many others, if we are lucky, will know what it is like to be old.” ~Diana Couper