I think part of what is so beautiful to me about this is that I never knew my Opa - he died 12 years before I was born. My dad has these old super-8 film reels of Opa, playing with my brothers when they were small. There's no audio, so I don't even know what he sounded like when he spoke or laughed. But he liked to make things - this desk my laptop sits on now was made by Opa, in fact. And this German Cream Coffee Cake was one of his culinary specialties.
And look at that incredible handwriting!
In the next week I'm going to make this cake. It will be the first time I've tried it, and I'm sure that as I make it, I'll be imagining Opa and how he prepared it. I'll bet he had no idea that 50-some years after transcribing this recipe, there would be a granddaughter thinking of him as she bakes in a small, cramped kitchen, looking at the words he wrote.
(I'll let you know how it turns out.)
2 comments:
I love the yellowed paper. I love the old script.
I also love the connection to history and the past, a past version of us. I've been struggling a lot lately with mortality, what happens to our consciousness and earthly relationships after we pass. And old things have some comfort, for me, I think.
Post a Comment