God has given me four wonderful grandsons, the children of my daughter Denise and her husband, Kevin. My greatest wish is that I lived near them, but sadly I don’t.<\/p>\n
Over the years I\u2019ve found that phone calls and e-mails and holiday visits are good. They just aren\u2019t enough. I miss those boys. It\u2019s a good thing I learned from my own grandmother M\u00e9M\u00e9 a delicious way for us to stay connected no matter the miles between us.<\/p>\n
M\u00e9M\u00e9 lived in a small town in the Massachusetts Berkshires, several hours away from where I grew up. I spent many girlhood summer vacations and one winter at her lovely home, mostly in the kitchen. That was M\u00e9M\u00e9\u2019s domain, and I loved being her helper. All she had to do was turn on the oven, and I would come running. We cooked and baked for the family and for her neighbors. While we waited for the timer to ring on whatever we had made that day, we would talk and laugh and she would tell me stories.<\/p>\n
Even now all of these years later, I can close my eyes and picture M\u00e9M\u00e9 in her handmade apron and the lace-up shoes with heels that made her stand ever so slightly taller than her four feet eleven inches, ready to slice a loaf of bread that was still warm from the oven. First, though, she would mark a cross on the bread with her knife and say a blessing in her native French.<\/p>\n
The winter I lived with her, M\u00e9M\u00e9 warmed many a cold morning with her stove-top rice pudding. She carefully stirred the creamy mixture with a wooden spoon, filling the kitchen with the sweet scent of vanilla. I knew it was finally ready when she handed me the spoon to lick.<\/p>\n
I wished I could spend that kind of time with my own grandchildren, but as Denise explained, \u201cTheir lives are so busy.\u201d<\/p>\n
So I followed M\u00e9M\u00e9\u2019s example. Whenever our family got together\u2014whether it was at my house or theirs\u2014I headed straight for the kitchen. The boys each had their special requests. Nick and Kevin\u2019s was pizza, made from scratch. Joe loved my pumpkin chocolate chip cookies. \u201cYour French toast is the best in the whole world!\u201d Frankie, the youngest, told me. They also all loved the creamy stove-top rice pudding I made (using M\u00e9M\u00e9\u2019s recipe, of course)\u2014especially licking the spoon.<\/p>\n
But the older my grandsons got, the harder it was to schedule visits. There were rehearsals for the church choir, for the school musical. Then the three older boys started their own band. Soon they were playing so many concerts, they hardly had any weekends at home.<\/p>\n
I feared that I had lost the closeness we\u2019d had, the closeness I remembered so well from M\u00e9M\u00e9\u2019s kitchen. My grandsons\u2019 lives were so complicated that I could barely keep up. To me, they were Nick, Kevin, Joe and Frankie. To the rest of the world they were the Jonas Brothers and the Bonus Jonas.<\/p>\n
It turns out that I had nothing to worry about. When I finally get to see my grandsons, it\u2019s like no time at all has passed. It\u2019s not Christmas without homemade cookies, and last year I baked several batches of family favorites. Joe was my helper, so naturally pumpkin chocolate chip cookies were among them.<\/p>\n
I visited Kevin a while back. One day he came into the kitchen and found me ready to bake pizza\u2014apron on, ingredients arranged on the counter, pizza pan ready to go into the oven. I showed him my recipe.<\/p>\n
Step by step, together we made the dough, let it set and made my special tomato and Italian seasoning sauce. Later we rolled the dough, covered it with the sauce and cheese and placed it in the oven. \u201cWow, Mama,\u201d he said, while we waited for it to bake, \u201cthat was really fun!\u201d<\/p>\n
Just like M\u00e9M\u00e9 showed me in her little kitchen in the Berkshires, when grandmothers and grandkids cook together, the real recipe is love. <\/p>\n