There it is my mother’s recipe box.
Wooden stained old Here in California Now.
From Ponca City, Oklahoma. On a shelf at 615 S 13th. The little house with a blue roof I lid so much. No matter where I go that will be Home. Maybe inside that box was my deepest safest home. Food, comfort, play came out of it. Mostly pies and candy.
My mother was at a loss for how to to be a wife or mother I think. If she fallowed recipes. Maybe she could figure it out. I’m not sure she knew how to be human. not that she was an inhuman monster, she just had no roll models. She collected. Recipes Later rocks, gems and minerals. Friends. After she died I found an address book full of names from all over the country. And letters long missles.people I never heard of with problems deep and sorrowful. Collected alphabetized almost. She could never have enough. Something was missing that she tried to fill.
She had had me after a long wait wasn’t I enough? Instead of playing with me she would hang with the phone crooked into her shoulder and pencil in the other hand and write down recipes all the while smoking and drinking coffee. That’s too many hands. I played on the floor alone, and the recipes rarely got made. She would say “Hi Kid” to the gal on the other end of the line and off they would go yakking. That’s what stY at home moms in the ’50s did. No play groups. Proud isolating Wife’s didn’t have to work-kids we were adornments
When the recipe did come out it was almost like I had a Mom. Or we did something together. I had her to myself. No phone, no cigarettes, just us and pie dough or frosting. Christmas was the best we made cookies and fruit cake to take to the neighbors. Little bowls of colored frosting
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