I’ve been speechless on this blog for a couple of days, as I struggled with a story that wouldn’t tumble out. It is what I have wanted to tell, but it didn’t want to be told.

I’ve been busy lately. It has been a whirlwind of sorting through the flotsam and jetsam of our world, as I attempt to simplify our lives. I’m getting rid of junk! Moving all those boxes for Share A Square out of the house brought this on me.

But, I found something in the debris, and I want to tell you about it. You see, I was on hands and knees on the kitchen tile, stretching into the dark recesses of my cabinets. I’m a brave woman to do that, because that’s where I hide things I don’t want to deal with any time soon. I pulled out a rusty metal file box. I’ve found several of those in my cleaning, and they never have anything of use in them. I just tossed it into my discard box.

Fortunately, it fell open.

Out of it fell my mother’s recipe cards. My sister and I have been searching for that since Momma died three years ago.

A myriad of emotions washed over me:

• Joy, that I had found it
• Horror, that I had almost pitched it out without knowing what it was
• Relief, that it was safe

As I thumbed through the stained cards looking at the words written in my mother’s beautiful and meticulous handwriting, I fell on the floor laughing like a hyena. It is a great irony that my Momma had a “recipe box,” because my mother would be the first to tell you that she was no kind of cook.

Throw a list of random numbers at my mother, and she could add them, subtract them, or divide them in her head (she had no need for a calculator). If an electrical outlet needed to be re-wired, my mother could do that. Any advice you might need about running a business, she could give you. Ask her arcane questions about history, and she knew the answers. But, put her in the kitchen and she was as helpless as a newborn kitten.

Momma didn’t learn to cook when she was young, because she didn’t need to do so - her mother did the cooking. Momma didn’t have time to learn anyway, because by the time she was fourteen years old, she worked as a carhop at a local root beer stand. As soon as she left school every day, she went to work. Her earnings (as pitiful as the amounts seem today) helped put bread and milk on the table at home.

When she got married, about the best my Momma could do in a kitchen was open a can, but she did that very well. Her inability to cook was a great frustration for my father.

One day in the first few weeks of their marriage, Daddy headed out the door to work. He asked Momma to fix a soup for supper.

“I don’t know how,” she said.

Exasperated, Daddy actually yelled at her, “Just get a pot of water and throw in everything you have in the refrigerator!”

Momma did just exactly that. She put carrots, tomatoes, celery, and a whole head of iceberg lettuce.

My Daddy became the cook in our family!

Fortunately, I didn’t learn to cook from my mother. But, I learned from her that I’m supposed to be stoic about grief. When she died, I shoved my grief aside (just as I did her recipe box) because I couldn’t deal with it at the time.

Funny how a simple box of recipes brings it all home. I’ve been thumbing through my memories and realizing how very much I miss my mother.

This is a good day to cook a soup. I wonder what I have in my refrigerator.