Who must know the way to make a proper home?

My father has taken on the intensely time-consuming and often thankless task of family genealogist, and over the past dozen years or so, has compiled an astounding amount of information about his father's and mother's sides of the family tree. He's collected, among other things, hundreds and hundreds of photographs, immigration documents, stories, and even the occasional sound recording. He has kept painstaking records of all of this information and build a sizable web site for members of our now-expansive family to visit and enjoy.

I appreciate all of this in a kind of future-thinking way, realizing that while it might be interesting to me now, there will come a day in my mid-life when it will suddenly and inexplicably become absolutely fascinating. As I wait for that to happen, I have tried to show my father the appreciation he deserves for all of this work, even when I have to just pretend that I remember how that distant cousin he's telling me about is actually related. It is so desperately important to him -- and while I don't yet feel the urgency he does to create these connections, I know that someday, I surely will.

Some time ago he tried to create a page on his web site for family recipes, those important cornerstones of a holiday table or family gathering, collected from the many branches of family he's found. He was not very successful when he started; perhaps the fast-food culture in which we live now has stifled that sort of kitchen creativity that makes items like "Auntie Joan's chocolate cake" a thing of the past. However, recently one of his cousins discovered a cache of several recipes written in the handwriting of my grandmother, my dad's mother, who died when my dad was only twelve.

My grandmother!

Never having met her, she is a hazy, mythical figure for me, certainly with no ability to bequeath me anything but eye color and a light sprinkling of freckles, and perhaps a lullaby my dad still sings, even to my daughters. But recipes! In her own handwriting! This is a gift from fifty years ago, saved in a drawer and waiting for a granddaughter named for her. What was she thinking as she wrote them out for her cousin's wife, imagining her instructions followed, the pinches and tastes probably never quite as right as when she made it herself? Could she have squinted and flashed on a woman in a kitchen in the midwest, little girls running underfoot, reading the loopy handwriting and measuring the same amounts, trying to conjure the soul food and the soul together?

Here it is: my grandmother's noodle pudding, lovingly known to us as "apricot kugel." Thank you, Grandma. It was delicious.