Following the Recipe

When I married the Big Guy in 1996, his mother gave me a gift that quickly became one of my most treasured belongings. It was a small gray file box filled with handwritten recipes on simple index cards. 

They weren’t just any recipes, though. They were all of her family’s favorite recipes with little personal notes added for clarity. I like to use a little less sugar, she wrote in the margin of her brownie recipe. At the bottom of her peanut butter cookie recipe, she added use cheap peanut butter, it works better.  Her coffee cake recipe included a small paragraph advising me that you can add blueberries or chocolate chips if you like, but I would leave out the cinnamon if you do.

In the corner of several cards, she added the name of the family member who was best known for that particular recipe.  That’s how I knew the sour cream coffee cake was Sara’s, the Quagmire bars were Aunt Neva’s, and the applesauce oatmeal cookies came from Great-grandma Goodwin. Aunt Libbee’s name popped up on many of them, as did Grandma Tice’s.

I remember sitting there at my wedding shower, holding that little gray box and feeling like I had just been invited to join an exclusive private club.

Over the years, I added my own recipes and notes to that little box. Aunt Ida’s Texas sheet cake. Aunt Marian’s porcupine meatballs. My friend Meg’s strawberry tofu pie. 

That last one really made the Big Guy mad when he discovered the tofu wrapper in the garbage. “You’re trying to poison me!” he roared.

“Oh, you loved it,” I told him. “You ate four pieces.”

“That was before I found out it had toad food in it,” he grumbled. “You can’t just sneak that shit into people’s food. That’s just wrong.”

Meg’s strawberry tofu pie aside, the recipes in that little box were used again and again and again. The cards became stained and wrinkled.  I thought about typing them all up and saving them on my computer, but it seemed almost sacrilegious to see those recipes copied down in anything other than my mother-in-law’s neat cursive writing. 

When the Big Guy and I separated, we fought bitterly over that little gray box. It was mine. His mother gave it to me and I used it for eighteen years. Oh, hell NO, I wasn’t going to let him have it. Folks, we fought an angrier custody battle over my recipe box than we did over custody of our children. 

“Why do you want it so bad?” I demanded. “You never even use it.”

“I’ll copy all the cards for you,” he told me. “You can have copies of the recipes. I just want the cards.”

“Why?”

He rarely stammered, but he did at that moment. He couldn’t look me in the eye as he muttered something.

“What? I can’t hear you.”

“My mom wrote them, okay? Someday, when she’s not here anymore, I’ll have her recipes in her handwriting. That’s …. important to me.”

Oh.

Oh. 

Needless to say, I let him keep the little gray box. We never got around to making the copies for me.

I sobbed when I found that box in his kitchen cabinet after his death. He had organized it and added new recipes to the old ones. But those stained, wrinkled, creased cards contain more than just recipes. They contain memories, emotions, experiences, love. The Big Guy’s recipe card for his sweet pickle relish has his fingerprints and sweat and probably some of my tears from reminiscing when I found it. 

I have no desire to ever try to make his sweet relish, but Lord, I’d give anything to watch him make it one more time. He’d clamp the antique food grinder to the edge of the picnic table in the back yard and swear at the cucumbers, onions, and peppers as he cranked the handle and watched the pieces fall into my big red Tupperware bowl. He’d sweat and complain about the mosquitoes and vow that this would be his last batch, and the kids and I would just hover behind him and breathe in the spicy, heavenly aroma.

I swear I can still smell it when I see that card in the little gray box. 

Recently, my sister shared a picture in a group text between us siblings. “Recognize this?” she asked.

It’s my mom’s recipe box.

For a moment, I couldn’t breathe. 

I recognized it immediately. Of course I remember it! How could I have forgotten all the times I saw Mom flipping through the little cards with her own notes in the margins? I had just assumed all of her "specialties" were all in her head, and that they died with her in 1987.

I have no idea what recipes it holds.

I remember her lemon meringue pie, her hot bacon spinach salad, her homemade chicken cacciatore. I miss her cooking and I miss her, even though she’s been gone from my life longer than she was in it. But seeing that little blue box makes me feel like there’s a part of her here with me, hugging me and telling me that everything’s going to be all right. 

I wish that all of the answers to life’s questions were written down on a stained, wrinkled, creased card in a little box somewhere.  That there might be tiny handwritten notes in the margins, telling me it’s all going to work out somehow. That everything really is going to be all right.

That I’m not as alone as I sometimes feel.

But there's no little recipe box for life, is there? No matter how much I want one, or how much I want to leave one for my kids after I'm gone. Because I've finally begun to realize that life isn't about following anybody else's recipe. Sure, we need to glance at the cards with their measurements and handwritten notes, but in the end, life's all about creating our own specialties and maybe -- if we do it right -- leaving our own set of handwritten notes in the margins for the next generation. 

Here There Be Dragons

I've heard it said that the average American adult will change careers approximately three times in their lifetime. I have no idea who said it or if it is true, but if it is true, I can proudly say that I have finally found one area of life in which I am well above average.

I've been a waitress and cashier. I've worked for an insurance company as an administrative assistant, word processing technician and machine transcriptionist. I was a cosmetologist, hotel front desk clerk, jewelry salesperson, lunch lady, and more.  Oh, and let's not forget to add author to that list.

I have a sneaky suspicion that I may be the living embodiment of the phrase "Jack of all trades, master of none."

So does it really come as a surprise to anyone that I've recently started a new career as a substitute teacher?

It's not really that much of a stretch, to be honest. This is what I studied in college. I finished three years' study in Secondary Education; granted, that was almost four decades ago, but the knowledge is still there in my brain. It may be buried under four decades worth of crap, but it's in there. Behind my kids' birthdays and shoe sizes, under the recipe for lemon meringue pie, and shuffled in with account numbers, miscellaneous passwords, and phone numbers for phones that no longer exist. 

It's all in there, man. Odds are about 50/50 that I'll be able to access it when I need it, but I got this.

I got this.

It's been an adventure, that's for sure. Some days, I think I'm learning more than I'm teaching. For example, I learned that it is crucial to tell ninth graders that playing Hangman on the board must only include school-appropriate body parts. Crucial.

Day one, the teacher left a note saying they could play the game after all work was finished. I watched in all my inexperienced, unsuspecting glory as the teenager drew the head, then torso, two arms, two legs, a third leg--

Oh.

Hang on.

Not a leg. 

"Erase that, please."

To my credit, I don't think any of the kids saw me laughing. I managed to keep it together until the bell rang, but all bets were off after that.

I got to teach a middle school science class where we talked about Newtons Laws of Motion. Middle school. Guys, I learned that in college. How in the heck are middle schoolers learning this stuff?

There's a pretty good chance that my high school gym teacher starts rolling in his grave every time I sub in a gym class. Of course, if I get smacked in the head by a few more well-aimed soccer balls, I may start spinning in my own grave.

The soccer team swears it's accidental, but I have my suspicions about a few of them.

I'm old, not stupid.

I spent a day in a fifth grade classroom with two pet geckos, one of which was apparently convinced it was a possum. It played dead very convincingly. So convincingly, in fact, that I'm still not sure it was playing at all. Reaching in and doing a wellness check on a potentially dead gecko was not part of my job description.

The same can be said about the bearded dragon in the science classroom at the high school. The teacher left a dish of food with a note that said "Dragon Food, do NOT eat" along with another note saying, "Don't worry about the dragon. I'll feed her tomorrow."

Bold of her to assume I would try to feed something with the word "dragon" in it's name.

I am, however, concerned that she felt the need to warn me away from eating the dragon's food. Are other subs in the habit of eating random bits of pet food that may be left lying around?

Honestly, I can't imagine this is a situation that is going to come up very often. Then again, two geckos and one bearded dragon are already three more lizards than I expected to deal with as a substitute teacher, so what do I know?

Obviously, not as much as I thought I did.

Out Of Tune

 

One would assume that anyone licensed to drive in the state of Michigan for over forty years would have a pretty solid grasp of the finer points of what you need to know to drive comfortably in this fine state

When it comes to me, however, that assumption would be wrong.

I get the basics. I totally understand that the roads here are always going to be more pothole than road. I know that there will always be more roads under construction than roads not under construction, and that construction plans here have recently had a weird predilection for building roundabouts in inexplicable places. I can even accept the fact that making a left turn in the town of Holland requires an advanced college degree, training in tactical military maneuvers, and a prescription for Xanax.

What I just can’t seem to grasp is the fact that people outside my car can see what’s happening inside my car.

Oh, I’m not alone in this transgression. And folks, just let me say here for the record – it doesn’t matter what kind of car you drive or where you’re  driving it, we can all see that finger in your nose. And when that finger is two knuckles deep, no one believes you’re  just itching.

Own the pick, dude. But do your booger-mining in private, please.

My in-car embarrassment isn’t quite so vulgar. Mine is more performative in nature.

That’s right: I sing. With the radio or without accompaniment. I sing loudly. And badly. I have zero delusions about my singing ability – or rather, lack thereof.

My automotive concertos also have to include instruments, naturally. Air guitar is a specialty, although experience has shown that my air drumming is a crowd favorite. Now that I think about it, that may be due to spectator fear that my swinging “batwings” may take out a window or even a nearby cyclist during a particularly enthusiastic crescendo.

I’ve also been known to carry on all kinds of conversations behind the wheel. Maybe I’m pre-planning a difficult discussion at work, or reliving a recent conversation to include all the jazzy comebacks I wish I’d said. Sometimes I talk my way through an upcoming blog post or an a bit of dialogue for my next novel. And let’s  face it, sometimes I’m just having a really important discussion with myself.

Hey, I live with my sons, aged 15 and 25. They both stopped listening to me long ago, roughly the same time they realized they were taller than me.

So, around their tenth birthdays.

They tend to wander away while I’m talking, or interrupt because they’ve  tuned out the sound of my voice and don’t realize I’m still speaking.

In my car, I have a captive audience, even if that audience consists of just me. I’ll take any opportunity to carry on a conversation with anyone, myself included. I mean, if I bore myself enough to tune out or walk away while I’m driving, I’ve got much bigger things to be worried about.

On my way to work yesterday, I did some fairly epic multitasking. I chatted through both sides of an intense conversation between main characters in my novel while enjoying a live recording of REM’s “Catapult." Everything was going great until I had to stop for a red light just in time to channel my inner Bill Berry for a fabulous drum solo.

I rocked it. The red light was a great opportunity to get both hands involved. I even worked up a bit of a sweat—although it's only fair to admit that I’ve also been known to work up a sweat putting on shoes and socks, so make of that what you will. Suffice it to say that I was seriously getting into it.

Right up until the moment I realized that the vehicle next to me at the stoplight was a school bus.

A school bus full of kids.

A school bus full of kids watching in open-mouthed wonder.

I immediately began praying that the students on that bus did not attend the school at which I was scheduled to substitute teach that day.

Let me just make it perfectly clear that God did not answer my prayers that day. Questions rolled in from students all day long.

“Ma’am, do you drive a little white car?”

 “Miss, what song were you listening to this morning?”

And my personal favorite: “Ma’am, should you be working today after whatever that was that happened in your car?”

It occurs to me that if I want to continue teaching in this town, it might be time for me to look into public transportation.