I
had three months between graduation and my wedding day.
“Well,
are you going to teach me how to cook?”
My mother looked up from her book, her eyebrows
raised.
“Cook?
If you can read, you can cook.” Her face brightened. “Let’s shop for your
trousseau!”
That
was my Mom – thoroughly modern Matilda. She must have been a great reader
because she was a good cook, although not at first. She loved to tell the story
of when her father in law (my detective grandfather who died the year I was
born) decided to visit his son and daughter in law. It was during World War II
and Dad was stationed in Ann Arbor Michigan. Mom shared a cottage on base with
Ann, another soldier’s wife.
The
first thing Grandpa Charles did when he arrived was declare he had a yen for an
apple pie. Mom pulled her roomie aside.
“Ann,
I have no idea how to make a pie! What should I do?”
“I
don’t know. He’s your father in law.”
I’m
told as fathers in law go he was one of those grumpy types, like a cop with no
patience and sore feet. But my mother
said he was rather sweet in an awkward sort of way. Mom
grabbed her cookbook and followed all the directions. She did a fairly good job
of rolling the dough into thin circles on the newspaper she had spread out.
“Fortunately,
the newsprint disappeared as the pie browned in the oven,” she would say
whenever she recounted the story of her first apple pie.
As
far as I’m concerned, that’s what bakeries are for.
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