Sitting on the office rug of our old house,
I remember holding the dog-eared index cards 
with my grandmother’s recipes.
The flour-dusted, butter-greased paper,
soft with wear,
my fingers traced the looping outlines 
of her careful handwriting.
Spritz cookies, zucchini bread, 
impossible pumpkin pie,
recipes from family, neighbors, 
perhaps the hard cover, weighty block 
of The Joy of Cooking.
Ingredients were carefully measured,
stirred, baked, or roasted
in my grandmother’s galley kitchen 
with the sage green phone. 
Tantalizing scents floated in the air,
reaching the bedrooms, the foyer, the front porch
where we watched the world walk by.
 
Every 3-inch by 5-inch rectangle
contained the memory DNA 
of dinners on lace tablecloths,
the sound of my grandfather’s hands
dancing across piano keys,
the hours spent playing marathon Canasta games.
The scent of almond crescents 
still transports me to the gold fabric couch
where my grandmother would fall asleep
watching episodes of M.A.S.H.
 
To collect these moments in my butterfly net,
savor the taste and aroma of life distilled 
in a thumbprint of jam,
I typed up every recipe, 
paired with faces from the past,
my grandmother posing with a Santa at Gimbels,
my 3-year-old self, sitting next to the yellow roses
in her postage stamp back yard.
Pages now bound,
a sleek, glossy cover, 
the promise of yesterday’s splash
of vanilla extract
to be felt by every generation,
simply by turning the page.
                        

Opening the front door,
the warm wave of scent would first hit your nose,
then wrap around your entire person,
until you weren’t breathing air anymore,
but rather inhaling the browning sweetness
of caramelized onions and carrots,
of tender, marinated morsels of meat—
the brown-sugared, heady scent of gravy.
 
If my mother knew I was coming home
for a visit, my favorite dish of stringy beef stew
over egg noodles would always be waiting
for me at least once during my stay.
The house itself became a comforting space,
a soft blanket space,
a full-tummied, satiated, cozy-up-on-the-couch
kind of space, where you could tell tall tales
of embellished adventures from your travels,
or revel in the familiar reminiscing of old family stories,
told over and over, to the point where,
even if you weren’t there, 
even if you weren’t born at that time,
you knew the story like a pair of well-worn gloves.
 
The bowl was always brimming,
as was the laughter.
When you sat down, spoon in hand,
there were no plans to leave the table 
until the moon was casting its egg white spotlight 
through the trees.
 
Home is the pot of stringy beef stew
wafting its mellow, warm, sweet steam to
the edges of life’s front door.
 
First read for the WNP Virtual Open Mic, Poetry Through the Pandemic series