Boxes stacked haphazardly lined the walls. Each one was labeled in Mom’s neat handwriting.
I couldn’t quite recall the last time I heard her voice. I had almost forgotten her laugh until the recording crackled and I heard it again: a little breathless and sweet.
I am not in the attic anymore. I’m transported to the lively kitchen of the year 1998. Christmas tunes floated gently in the air, the warmth from the oven embraced me. The scent of cinnamon and nutmeg swirled through the room.
I stirred the bowl with all my might while bits of batter were flying onto the countertop, but Grandma didn’t mind. She stood tall beside me. Her hands gently guided mine, as we folded the dough over and over.
“Slowly now, dear, you don’t want to tire out the dough. It’s like giving it a little massage,” She’d say, while her wrinkled fingers folded the mixture expertly. She always hummed the same carol as we worked—Silent Night.
I’d always sneak a piece of the raw cookie dough, and she’d catch me, “Only a little, now,” she’d laugh, wagging a flour-covered finger at me. “We still need enough for the cookies!” Her laughter would bounce off the walls, and I’d giggle too, my cheeks warming as I brushed the flour from my nose.
Then, silence.
The recorder stopped abruptly.
I am not in the kitchen anymore. I’m all alone in the attic, clutching the antique machine as if it was her, as if it could bring her back. The gap between us feels impossibly wide, like the attic rafters that stretch above me. But then, I hear a tiny voice behind me.
“Mom?”
I turn and see the small frame of my daughter standing in the doorway. She held two aprons in her chubby hands and looked up with her wide eyes.
“Can we bake some cookies?”
“Of course, sweetheart,” I say, my voice trembling just a little.
We head downstairs to the kitchen. I set the recorder on the counter and pressed play again, letting Grandma’s voice fill the room. Her words crackle through the speaker, as though she’s standing there beside us, guiding us step by step through the recipe that was written long before either of us were born.
As I show my daughter how to knead the dough, I guide her tiny fingers just as grandmother had once guided mine. The dough is sticky between our hands, clumps of flour clinging to our fingers and dusting the countertops. The recorder hums quietly in the background, and I catch fragments of Grandma’s voice, mixing with the faint strains of an old Christmas tune— “Chestnuts roasting on an open fire…”
The past isn’t gone. It’s here, living in the act of kneading dough, of dusting flour on tiny hands, of humming that old Christmas tune that filled kitchens long before I was born and will fill them for the years to come.
“Are they ready, Mom?” my daughter asks, peering up at me with flour smeared across her cheeks. As the timer dings and we pull the tray from the oven
I smile, kneeling down beside her. “Yes, sweetheart. They’re just perfect.”
As we sit together and share the first warm bite, I realize I am sharing what remains— one memory, one cookie, one moment at a time.
Photograph by Eden Chen
Article by Dharaneeswar