grief

Melancholy

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Ma’s Donuts.

The picture sat in my inbox. A picture of an old recipe, brown with age, short on detail, ending with an abrupt: Roll out 1/4 inch think Fry.

Comical spelling error aside, there was only one short message sent with the image: It’s cold here!

Sent December 22, 2024. Not from my ma. Nor indeed from her ma. But from my dad’s ma, my Nana.

A donut recipe passed down through generations and one that we – my extended family and I – were all keen to make sure was passed down to us. Nothing was quite like the simple potato donuts, spiced with nutmeg, and fried to a golden brown.

And we all knew, though we didn’t say, the one who made these magical treats wouldn’t be around much longer.

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Delight 11: Hope in Grief

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I used to be top dog priority in my house before I went overseas.

I don’t mean in a “I was more important than everyone else in the household.” I was just literally my dogs’ top priority. Any time I went upstairs, there was a scramble of paws on the staircase behind me as my dogs raced me to the top to join me in taking a nap, working on homework, reading a book; really whatever it was, they just wanted to be a part of it. To sit at the foot of my bed and maybe get in a belly rub while they were at it.

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Retrospect

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nature-leaves-fall-neature

It was one of those fall evenings where the light starts to fade earlier and everything feels much later than it should be: the night, the projects due, the dinner that no one’s gotten to yet. The symposium had gone well…what little I could understand of it. Sometimes I wondered how I even got into college and even now I felt like an infiltrator, sitting in the back of the classroom, pretending I could actually be a part of this world where people defended their papers to their peers.

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