SKIRT Magazine, November 2008
"Your house smells like cookies.”
That’s what the delivery guy says as he drags in my boxes.
For the past year, he has race-walked my pavement in his brown pants and shirt. Today, however, is his last day. He’s going back to school, but first he’s taking a week off to bake cakes.
“Cakes? Really?” I raise my brow.
“Yeah, my mom used to make pound cake and this big monster chocolate cake for our family reunion, but now she’s in a nursing home.”
His mother suffers from dementia, that cruel slight window between a bad memory and Alzheimer’s. Two years ago, she dumped a tablespoon rather than a teaspoon of salt into her prized pound cake. A year later, she misread three cups of milk for eight. Then she couldn’t find the recipes at all.
The delivery guy took over. He recounts digging through a kitchen of clutter, through dog-eared cookbooks missing their spines and magazine clips yellowed and stained. He rescued the recipes....
Read the rest at SKIRT magazine: You must scroll down; on the left, under essays, click on SWEET RECALL. http://www.skirt.com/
