When I was young and hosting my first-ever Thanksgiving meal, I called my mother, frantic, and asked her how to make the homemade sausage stuffing that has been a mainstay on our family table as far back as the days when my great-grandmother was preparing the feast.
My mother, ever practical, said she’d come over to show me; we’d make the stuffing together. Some of my earliest memories center on my beloved grandmother — my “Nanny” — and my mom in the kitchen, Nanny cooking, my mother invariably sneaking in with a big spoon to “taste” the stuffing every hour or so.
Anyway, armed with sausage meat and onions, celery and sage, my mother headed over to that tiny kitchen in my first apartment and together, we made the stuffing. I remember everything about that night, even what TV show — “Beverly Hills: 90210” — was playing in the background. The lesson she gave me was about so much more than stuffing. The celery, she said, needed time to simmer and get soft — a positive outcome is all about patience, that’s what she was illustrating, as she chopped and talked. Don’t throw too much sage and thyme into the mix — life is all about balance, carefully measured steps.
That stuffing was delicious, and everyone at the Thanksgiving table raved, giving me all the credit for my first attempt. My mother never said a word about how she’d walked me through it. She just smiled and let me enjoy the moment.
Later, when my mom was dying at 53 of an ugly and greedy cancer that stole her from us so young, in the heat of an August day, she told me that even though she’d been too sick to really eat, she’d been dreaming of our Thanksgiving stuffing — told me how she longed to taste it one more time. And so, I rushed home and started cooking, in a frenzy really, because I was literally in a race against time — and also, this had to be the best stuffing I’d ever made.
Of course, it wasn’t. Blinded by tears and the loss that was already becoming an unbearable reality in my heart, I’d cut the celery into pieces that were too big, and I hadn’t let them simmer long enough, so they weren’t quite soft. I could tell, when she took a bite, that the stuffing was hard for her to eat. But my mother’s face broke into a beautiful smile and she thanked me and told me it was the most delicious batch of stuffing I’d ever made.
She died two days later. That stuffing was the last meal I shared with my mother.
Now, years later, as I cook Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners, I have the recipe for our family stuffing beside me, in my mother’s beautiful, precious handwriting. I framed that wrinkled and worn slip of paper, covered as it is, not only with the recipe — and gravy splatters — but with my mom’s grocery list for that year. That recipe hangs on my wall, and is one of my most treasured possessions, because I can see her face as she sat there writing every step down for me, hear her voice and the sound of her laughter.
After my mother died, I wrote about that stuffing in my editor’s note, for a women’s magazine I edited. Letters came pouring in from all corners of the country. So many people, from all different places, had similar stories to share, about recipes that had been handed down from mothers and grandmothers, sisters and friends. About how when they cooked the foods, those smiles and faces came alive again, if only for a few hours, in their kitchens and hearts. The recipes were about so much more than food. They were, and are, about love, and the ties that bind, forever, tying us to our histories and to the family that loved us — and it’s that love that we pass on to our own children around every Thanksgiving table.
As I prepare the same foods for my own son that covered our Thanksgiving table in our apartment in Brooklyn during the holidays of my childhood — the mashed turnips and mashed potatoes, creamed onions and yes, that stuffing — I hear my mother’s joyful laughter, see my grandmother’s smile as she handed me a big spoon after she’d mashed the potatoes and asked me, a beloved little girl, if I’d like a taste. We never wavered from that ritual, every single year. I can hear my Uncle Norman asking for ham when my Nanny had spent hours cooking a turkey, and see her bite her tongue because it was, after all, a holiday. I see my Uncle Kenny digging in to the stuffing and asking for seconds — he loved the recipe so much he cooked it for his own family. I can see my mother-in-law, who taught me to make the famous Finn family mashed potatoes with cheese. And I can see my son Billy, on his first Thanksgiving, when all of those family members were still with us, gathered around a big table in my tiny apartment, eating the first Thanksgiving dinner I’d ever prepared, surrounded by warmth and delicious aromas, and most of all, love. So much love.
My son found a way to make it back home for an early Thanksgiving this year — specifically, he said, because he wanted that turkey dinner. And so, days early, I found myself chopping and stirring, basting and yes, preparing my mother’s stuffing for my own child. That dinner meant so much to him that he flew thousands of miles to share it with me, just the two of us, keeping alive a tradition as old as time and one that I know now, will live forever in his own children, and theirs.
And as I cooked, I felt the love of my mother and grandmother, and I knew, without a doubt, that they will live forever, in our recipes — and in the love.
