At night, after my day as a spice merchant
concludes, the smell of garlic and onion
dust coats my clothes and body like a new
skin, as though I am someone different.
I do not shower before visiting my parents,
my scent melds with their age and confinement.
My mother intermittently recognizes
me like I’m an actor from a bygone era –
Vaguely familiar but the frayed connection
– the one flavored by memory – does not spark.
We still talk about the old days and my father
recalls a dish my mother once cooked.
She made it only once or twice a year
to wrap memory of an event around a meal.
She measured and dashed common ingredients –
savory comfort, we now longed for more than ever
and on a whim, he wanted to replicate it
because it reminded us when we were
more whole. And it is now unknowable
because we never asked. Yet we know it’s here.
It’s here. Hidden in plain sight
so we search. My mother’s lost
recipe is tucked away in her vast library
of cherished cookbooks accumulated over
a lifetime; a recipe tucked between dog-eared pages.
that single page, that worn index card eludes us.
We grow more desperate to remember
And to find it. She cannot rescue us from
our fecklessness as she once did:
every word has been erased of meaning,
has been scrubbed clean from memory.
We cannot stop trying until we find
a piece of her as she searches for a morsel
of the familiar,
searches for home.
Photo ©Julie Anderson All Rights Reserved
