Georgia's always begging me for a story and a few days ago I told her a cooking story about my early experiments in the kitchen when I was maybe 10 or so. I remember making up this concoction that I really liked but was really wierd. It was a layer of peanut butter spead on a plate with shredded carrots on top and raisins scattered over it and apple slices layed around the edges and a pile of celery sticks to scoop it up with. So today while we were upstairs watching Preschool Power 8, learning how to make a homemade kazoo, Georgia decided that she was going to make us all a snack. I said, "Great! Can you get me a grapefruit?" and she said, "I'm not taking orders, I'm just going to make one snack for everybody." (My words, haunting me.) And I said, "But I just want a grapefruit!" And she said, "You're going to eat what I give you." (I don't remember ever saying that, but I guess it's possible.) So with that authoritarian declaration, she went off into the kitchen by herself. When we came downstairs for our snack I was amazed and touched that she had rememberd my kitchen story and recreated my weird peanut butter dip exactly as I described it. I laughed and cried and hugged that big-hearted girl so hard. She made my weird thing just for me. She made my memory come to life. It was beautiful.
P.S. The title of this post is the name of a book we love about Anansi, the spider man, (an African hero-character) and how he becomes a storyteller. One of the first lines of the book is, "A story, a story, let it come, let it go" and the last line of the book is, "This is the story as I have related. Take some with you and let some come back to me."
Posted by Bahiyyih at January 27, 2007 02:30 AM