Baking

My mother used to take me into the kitchen
and sit me on her stool, weathered and white.
Tattered cookbooks. Ancient tomes. Inherited wisdom.
She would offer me the brittle pages,
her hands moving in practiced motion
as I stumbled through the instructions.

They were crystal clear, her instructions:
a teaspoon of this, a dab of that. Gems of her kitchen.
The flour was my favorite. Little puffs of white
filling the air like so much ancient wisdom.
My small hands dropped the frail pages
as she held me high, teaching me her motions.

Whip and flip and stir and spoon. The motions
deeply ingrained by her mother. She needed no instructions,
this was her place. Her sanctuary. Her kitchen.
Now, her floor is weathered with time. It isn’t white
anymore. And she has passed all of that wisdom
on to me, endless knowledge written in the pages.

She’s tucked them away for safety, those pages.
The recipes for life. The motions
of our lives. More than just instructions
for baking. Here, she describes life outside the kitchen.
A world full of hopes. Dreams. Heartbreak. White
pages littered with fingerprints of time convey everything she taught me.

Her wisdom. Her mother’s wisdom. And now
my children watch me. It’s my turn to hold the wisdom.
To teach them, to pass on the legacy left in her pages.
I hold them close to my chest, I show them her motions.
We follow them together. All her instructions
on how to master the kitchen
and live life; messy, beautiful, chaotic.

Our time passes in a blaze of white
and I find what I miss most is her wisdom.
Though it cannot replace her, I still have her pages.
And the memory of her motions
to offer me instructions.
I hear her voice, whenever I enter my kitchen.

Memories echo through the halls, a comfort.
There is wisdom to be found in those ancient pages.
In her instructions on how to live life.

Baking first appeared in The Oval yearly anthology.