My Mom, like most moms of her generation, had a recipe box. It was a simple wooden box holding standard-sized recipe cards with a flat cover and a small wooden cube attached on top that was used as a handle.
It was filled mostly with handwritten recipes, a few magazine recipes she’d collected over the years and a few random pieces of paper, tucked in here and there, with simple directions, like the one that described how to make Lutefisk in the microwave. It was an ordinary recipe box by all definitions, blending into the background of her life for many years and it only stopped being ordinary the day she died.
As we were sorting through her things one day, I opened a kitchen cupboard and saw this simple wooden recipe box. As I pulled it out of the cupboard, memories of a childhood spent baking and cooking with her flooded my mind and eyes.
This small insignificant little box suddenly looked like a priceless treasure I had discovered in the midst of an ordinary kitchen. The bonus was seeing her handwriting on each card and a memory attached to each recipe. I had found a treasure and a way of keeping her alive in my heart and in my kitchen.
Many people spend their lives building a legacy to pass on. A way to leave their mark on the world, or at least their small corner of it; in hopes that their life will make a difference to someone. At that moment, this small wooden box became her legacy to me.