“Oh that Aunt Jan, she shouldn’t be getting me anything,” I say while tearing the wrapping off of a white shirt box on Christmas morning. I lift the lid and find a worn Ziploc baggie. “What’s this?” Inside is a writing tablet with my grandma’s name stamped on it twice and two brittle handmade cookbooks.
When I unseal the top of the Ziploc bag, it smells! It’s chemically sweet like dryer sheets and Aqua Net. It’s the smell of visiting my grandma at the Beauty Shop behind her house; of shop towels in the laundry; of pretending to “sit under the dryer” while watching her roll hair into rows of rollers. I want to hoard this smell.
I delicately thumb through one of the cookbooks, “Relief Society Recipe Book”. There is a handwritten page tucked inside for Coconut Marshmallow Layer Cake. I smell you and I hoard you.
The second of the recipe books is two-hole punched; red plastic rings holding the loose typed double-sided pages. The recipes are from Winslow women, I recognize some of these names. I like the name Goldie Cooke, I think she was a friend of grandma’s. It has no cover and no date, could it be the 50’s, 60’s – not sure who collected these and put them together. Some women’s club I imagine, but which one?
Hot Milk Sponge Cake
Food For The Gods
Sopapillas
Grandma’s contribution: Spoon Bread Tamale Pie, also South of the Border Casserole, and a Cranberry Salad with celery and marshmallows. I’ve eaten you.
Many of the women’s recipes use the word “scant”. Scant cup sugar, scant cup oil. Why scant?
Which brings me to this thought: I’m beginning a New Year thinking about Transactive memory – a system of explaining how we rely on our family, friends, and community to store information for us. Each person doesn’t need to remember everything the group needs to know, it’s the capacity to know who knows what. How people in close relationships “coordinate” memory and tasks. These recipe books unlock transactive memories about food and community, and a shared culinary heritage.
Like a family story that is laughter plus smells plus food. The whole is greater than the sum. I think this might mean that my iPhone is part of my transactive memory? And this blog?
I’m going to try to remember that what I know includes what those around me know. I’m thinking about this while smelling old crumbly recipe books, trying to conjure my grandma’s expertise and areas of specialization, part of the memory of my childhood, and wondering what there is to learn from making that Coconut Marshmallow Layer Cake? And smelling Aqua net?
