Home for the Holidays

“My hands hurt,” she sighed.

I, a mere shadow of the kin, of the son that comes first and always will. I was never her favorite, nor her mine.

But before, heirloom recipes were fiercely protected from prying eyes of the younger generation.

I am asked to help where before I was shooed away. I glimpse pain where before I was shown only strength. The chink in the chain-link of armor is widening, and I glimpse the passage of time where I naively thought there was none.

I joke away forgotten ingredients, momentary lapses in speech. I smile to reassure, to steady hands, and offer my own when mind succumbs to matter, and trembling will not cease.

Spices are substituted in tribute to failing organs, parts meant to last 30, 40 more years, but worn down with abuse and neglect.

There is a bittersweet knowledge in finally knowing the secrets of those who were your giants.

You can always go home again.

But nothing, nothing in the world, remains unchanged.

I am here to make them forget that they are forgetting. I am here to help them remember. I am here so they will not be forgotten.