I’ve never tried that chocolate angel food recipe
but each time I see it in my cookbook
I think of you

trailing Grandma Fay around her kitchen
writing down her every move
forcing her to measure ingredients
she could gauge by sight or feel
getting in her way
so you could replicate her result
transform the mediocrity of your own first effort
(the mediocrity of her written recipe)
into the mouthmelt you knew this cake to be.

Did she resent your intrusion,
the way you slowed her progress?

Did she begrudge your desire
to match her mastery?

I think more likely she welcomed your company,
appreciated the compliment,
enjoyed passing on her secrets
to her youngest son’s wife.

I suspect she knew the meaning of posterity
and may even have anticipated
the future generations,
children she would never meet,
who might know her only
through her recipe
and this story.