I make yogurt in my instant pot now, I’m currently making my second gallon now with a third gallon in process. The first was for the shish barak I’m making for me to share with friends. The other two are for a friend and a friend of a friend who cook community dinners like I do.

 

I can’t make yogurt without thinking of my mother. I can’t cook shish barak or wrap grape leaves without thinking about how she would spend hours in the kitchen doing the same for me, just to see me grin ear to ear and stuff myself. My favorite foods.

 

I’ll never taste her version of them again, and my versions will never taste as good as hers.

She and I struggled a lot in our relationship in life but I would give anything at all to flop down on my couch around three pm, when I’m done all my daily work and my cleaning, call her and ask her what she thinks I should make for dinner.

 

We’d talk for a few minutes, and sure, most of the time it would end in exasperation, but I don’t even care anymore. I just want her back.

 

I know, realistically, I’m likely going to lose my dad soon too. I already don’t speak to him as much as I want to. I miss our early morning coffee calls, but he’s been so busy and so tired all the time. I probably won’t ever see him in person again. I know this. I can’t accept this.

 

Turning thirty wasn’t a problem. Having kids didn’t make me feel old. I joke about the aches and pains and the creaking in my joints. I laugh about how I can’t scale walls like I used to. I never thought much about aging. It never mattered to me.

 

I didn’t think about how getting older meant I would eventually lose my parents. I wasn’t ready to lose my mother. I’m never going to be ready to lose my dad.

 

I wish I had the relationship I had with them as an adult as a child. I feel robbed of so many years we could have had together.

 

Tomorrow, I will flour my counters and roll out pounds and pounds of dough. I’ll fry up five pounds of ground beef and a pound of onions. I’ll carefully stuff tiny dumplings. I’ll spend a couple hours carefully stirring a yogurt sauce and hoping it doesn’t separate. I’ll gently drop the dumplings in and think of my mother and the whole time I’ll promise her that my kids will know all about her. That one day they’ll be standing over their own stoves, stirring their own dumplings into their own yogurt sauce, maybe making dinner for their own children, and they’ll be thinking of how they sat on the counters and heard me tell them stories of their grandmother while they learned to cook this meal.

And maybe we can pass on tradition and culture and stories and memories and in this way, our ancestors will never really leave us.