Letters To Lyla

Dear Lyla,

My students and daddy’s students frequently ask us how we met and why we got together. I am sure that your daddy’s tale differs from mine, and I am positive it is never a consistent answer. Over the past few years I have heard responses ranging from weary surrender to mythic storytelling. One thing I have learned is to let your daddy tell his own tales and that there will likely be a large dose of humor and mythology involved in the telling. I am sure that the two of you will likely have a laugh or two at my expense over the years as you bond together to tease your silly mommy: I see it happening now; the two of you have a very similar sense of humor. I will cheerfully accept your gentle ribbing, secure in the knowledge that it comes from a place of love and admiration. The truth is that I believe your daddy wanted to marry me for a variety of reasons and today I will share one. Although he may chuckle heartily and say “that isn’t why I married your mommy,” deep down he will recognize the honesty when I say: one of the reasons daddy wanted to marry me is that I can cook. Coming from me it sounds horribly antiquated and fits a multitude of stereotypes that make me inwardly recoil; but there you have it, mommy can cook. What you need to know is that my culinary skills are really quite average; there is nothing special about my cooking (other than there is love in every bite). However, in contrast to your Grandma Carolyn’s cooking prowess, I seem like a contender for Iron Chef. While growing up your daddy, Aunt Sara and Uncle Aaron used to joke about what they would get for supper. According to them, every night the carbohydrates came from a box and the protein came from a can. The night’s fare was, as they recount, either chicken “junk” or tuna “junk” (they use more colorful language but I am trying to keep this letter rated G). I could not believe that this could possibly be true. It sure was in stark contrast to my own experience because your Grandma Jo is an excellent cook! After spending more time with Grandma Carolyn in those early days I became increasingly aware that your dear grandma has many talents but cooking isn’t one of them. I have so many examples of good intentions in the kitchen gone wrong that I will have several more letters to write just based on those experiences!  Unfortunately for Grandma Carolyn, her heartfelt attempts to show her love via food have failed miserably time and again. I remember one weekend when I stayed with Grandma Carolyn and Uncle Aaron while on break from school (daddy was teaching so he stayed behind) she wanted to make one of my favorites, barbecued kielbasa. By this time I had already tasted her cooking and I eagerly volunteered to make it myself but she insisted that she could do it. I watched in horror as she threw the meat into a pan set over the highest flame possible, she then proceed to add an entire jar of store bought barbecue sauce. Little one I need to tell you that cooking is partly art but it is a whole lot of chemistry, and if you don’t understand chemistry then you end up with a pan full of meat stuck to the bottom with the glue you created from heating sugar quickly at a high temperature. The meal was inedible and it took your Uncle Aaron and I well over an hour and a half to clean the pan! It is a certainty that when you get older and you are sitting around with your cousins, aunts and uncles we will retell all of the stories of Grandma Carolyn’s cooking disasters. Your grandma has a good nature though and she will join in, both in defense and confession of her lack of culinary skills. What I want you to know little one is that even though grandma’s food was largely inedible; she made her offerings with love. To feed someone is the most basic thing that you can do for another human being and one must always accept an offering of food with the utmost respect for the hands that prepared it.