Generation Gap

I made my grandmother’s sugar cookies tonight. I’ve had the recipe for years, ever since I wrote it down, standing by her side at the kitchen counter as she threw everything together, the normally effortless process disrupted by my insistence on getting exact measurements.

Grandma, my mother’s mother, made the best sugar cookies I’ve ever had. When my parents were courting my father would head for the cookies as soon as he came over. Grandma told me, laughing, that she thought he married mom just to make sure he had adequate access to a continual supply of her cookies.

If he did, I can understand. She was one of the best cooks I’ve ever run across, and her cookies melted in your mouth, dissolving on your tongue like a little piece of heaven. Dip them in milk and they were better still, if you could get them in one piece to your mouth.

I’ve never made them before this. It was hard to make them now. Not because it’s a difficult recipe, but because of some reluctance in me to infringe on my memories of her. She’s been gone for 15 years; you’d think I’d have said all my good-byes by now.

Maybe this is the last good-bye, this handing off to a younger generation. I’m sure what I make won’t be nearly as good as what she made, if only because I'm not 80 years experienced. But, tomorrow, my daughter will be cutting out sugar cookies for the first time, and how could we do something so important with anything less than her great-grandmother’s recipe?