Cold Day, Warm Soup

Today Ken and I made wedding soup, a fact in itself that is nothing to write about. But for me, every time we make it, I feel a sense of family closeness.

The recipe we use is a handwritten copy that my mother-in-law, Dee, wrote in one of her final years.  Seeing her handwriting on the page and imagining her writing it as carefully as she could evokes many emotions. This copy of the recipe was written while she was suffering from Alzheimer’s disease. As I look at the curves and scrolls, some misspellings, words jumbled together, and some scratched out, I can only imagine what she dealt with during those years.

With blind faith a few years ago, Ken and I tried the recipe, not knowing if she had copied it correctly from her original recipe book. Throughout her years, Dee would write any recipe she liked in her blue spiral notebook with the lined pages. There was no particular order to the notebook, no sections for appetizers, main meals, breads, pies and desserts. Whenever she found a recipe she liked, whether it was given to her by a friend or family member, heard on the radio, or gleaned from a magazine or the newspaper, she would write it on the next free page of her notebook. Those recipes were always available when she or any of the family needed them. That was until she rewrote her recipes in a new notebook, then to our dismay, threw away the original.

As I follow those directions written by her hand I feel like she is here with me. She taught me how to make many meals and was a patient teacher. I remember back to times when she spent the better part of a day making wedding soup with her daughter, Barb, and my daughter, Karin.  I had never actually made it with her or before she passed away. But I enjoyed the fruits of her labor along with the stories she would tell about making it. She often made a double batch of croutons because we enjoyed eating them even without the soup. Sometimes they would also bake rolls to go with it. We would all gather together to enjoy the bounties of their labor.

Ken helps me make wedding soup now. Like Dee, he enjoys cooking and trying new recipes. Spending time in the kitchen together, we have reminisced many times about things Dee liked to cook. As the soup and its steam warm up my kitchen, my life and my heart are warmed by loving thoughts of her. I couldn’t have asked for a better mother-in-law.  She laughed often, took a lot of ribbing from her family, and created a wholesome feeling among us. She was the glue that held our family together.

Memories are made of simple things, kind acts and time spent with those we care about. Take time to create a memory today,