Hermit Cookies

Hermit Cookies

I paced that aisle at least a half dozen times, scanning the shelves for the very specific jar. Yellow label, brown and black text, a woman’s cameo within the central image. Her white puff of hair and wire-framed glasses always seemed comforting, maybe because they’re so much like Mémère’s. On my sixth or seventh trip down the aisle I spot the molasses, hidden among the Karo and cane sugar syrup, just above the raisins. The one with the rabbit is front and center, the plastic bottle of black strap molasses tucked to the side. But no Grandma’s, not even a space for it. That jar had always sat ubiquitously in the lower right corner of Mémère’s cabinet above the oven – her baking staples. Molasses (as she believed any self-respecting French Canadian grandmother would have), brown sugar, chopped nuts, flours, spices, candied fruits, and the sturdiest set of cake pans I’ve ever laid eyes on. Well-seasoned, well loved, and never in neglect – the spices never had time to go stale, the tins and trays never had time to collect dust.

The counterspace of my tiny first apartment kitchen is barely enough to place everything I needed. Parchment on the cookie sheets, I set the oven to 365 – Mémère notes to bake them at 350, but my oven, like my hands, runs cold. It’s a blessing when working pastry and candy, a curse in most other cases. The cabinet door clangs shut after I grab the flat-bottom Pyrex dishes I elected as mixing bowls – Mémère’s of course, snagged from her kitchen when my sister bought her house. It was all so sudden when she moved into Riverside. Mémère moved a year ago, and my father and his siblings began the process of cleaning, organizing, removing what was deemed unneeded. My sister closed on the house in the following autumn, and began the process of making it her own. I laid claim to photo albums, trinkets with meaning, and bakeware. Because in a way, her recipes on her cookie sheets by my hands is almost like when she was teaching me. Almost.

Riverside called my father and his siblings almost simultaneously to tell them a room was available. “When can she move in?” “Oh, oh ok. How much of her things from home can she have?”

My mother found the recipe in the pile of things we believe were Nonnie’s, my father’s father’s mother. It’s a bit of a mystery how the recipe came through her hands to her daughter-in-law – Nonnie didn’t bake, or cook much at all. And yet my grandfather became a chef, professionally trained and gainfully employed by hotels, camps, the US Army. My grandmother, though, was a cook. A family cook, a baker, a devotee of the craft of producing warmth in the hearts of those you love. Eyes barely above the counter, I watched countless batches of baked goods, cookies, delicate and splendid cakes and pies slide out of the oven and onto the cooling racks. She produced miracles of confection in such a small kitchen, the dining table serving as base camp and workbench to the elaborate processes applied to her stores of sugar and chocolate. Butter caramels, divinity fudge, coconut peaks, molasses sugar cookies, hermits, whoopie pies, cherry cordials, and mint cremes all graced the white paper boxes of her Christmas delicacies. And I wish I had paid more attention.

I cream the sugar, shortening, and molasses. I add the vanilla and eggs, cracked one handed just as she taught me. The whirr of the hand mixer covers my mumbles as I talk myself through the recipe, reciting her lessons and instructions as I go.

Christmas Eve makes one year of her residence at the memory care home, ever so indelicately labelled as the county rest home’s dementia ward. For the first few months, she opened every visit with a request to go home. She missed her sewing room, she missed her kitchen. Over time, home changed location. From Kelwyn Park, her home since 1963 where she and Pépère built their family, to Williams Street, where she spent her childhood. Misplacement of hearing aids and glasses has become commonplace, her sleep no longer follows any pattern. Names of family members and friends transpose, relational identities are replaced simply with “Oh, piton, I know you, right?” Details long set aside return into prominence with utter specificity and unforeseen application. Prices of garments bought decades ago, the location of a childhood friend’s home, and tasks desired to be completed in her young adult life all arrive with an urgency placed atop the inability to address such information. And yet she no longer understands why she cannot do something about it.

When I packed my bags and moved to Germany for the summer, I knew she likely would not recognize me upon return. I tried to brace for it. I don’t believe anyone in the family could have assumed my last visit before departure would have been the last time I’ve seen her face to face. Two weeks into my foreign residence, my mother informed me Riverside was suspending in-person visitations, for safety in the face of the pandemic. Their hope was for only a few weeks, possibly a couple months if necessary. It has been a year. I have been here, in my hometown, just six miles from her, for months, and yet I cannot see her. Yet I know, despite the slips in verbiage which I may have viscerally reacted against when produced from a family member’s lips, she is not past-tense. She is still here, still there, yet just out of reach.

Hermit cookies, when pulled out of the oven, should be browning around the edges and polished across the top, with a soft center. This can be achieved by rotating your baking sheets halfway through your baking time, just as Mémère directed me to do when first instructing me on the recipe. She trusted me at such a young age to have conviction in my actions. I spooned the flour into the measuring cup, don’t just scoop, it’ll pack too tight. I added dry into wet, one third at a time. It’s ok to taste test as you go, but only a little bit, so I do. She let me make the measurements. She let me choose to add more cinnamon than the recipe stated – or at least as she wrote down from memory. She taught me, a young child of five or six years, to trust my decisions. I mixed the dough only until combined, you don’t want a tough cookie. And I trusted myself in making hermit cookies alone, making them without her guidance, without her knowledge that I am making them. Had this been any other time, any other year, I would be bringing her samples from the batch as soon as they were cooled enough to wrap in foil and transport. I would be asking for feedback, constructive critique, on taste, texture, technique. I would be asking how she learned the recipe, how she learned to bake, how she found food to be a presentation of her love for her family. I would be thanking her, in person, with a hug, a kiss, holding her hand as we discuss the minutia of the recipe that is our family’s lineage leading to where we are now. I would be thinking about recording these conversations, documenting this history, before it’s too late, before it’s gone. And yet this is not any other time; this is the world as I know it at present.

I drove with my parents and my sister to Riverside, invited by the nurses to decorate a Christmas tree. The tree is outside, of course, in this pandemic age, but placed to be seen from Mémère’s room. Informed by her nurse that her family was here to decorate a Christmas tree, Mémère stood in her window watching us. She stood puzzled and bewildered for a moment, I don’t believe quite grasping the occasion. We moved about swiftly as she watched her youngest son, his wife, her only grandson, and her youngest granddaughter decorate a fake tree in silver and gold and fake poinsettias and tinsel and sparkling angels and all her favorite bits of Christmas. I stopped at one point, looking up to her second-story window, her fluff of white hair and silver-framed glasses peering down to me. I took off my pandemic-mandatory face mask, smiled and waved, and blew a kiss. She waved her hands, beckoning we come inside to visit. My sister placed the angel topper, and I tied around the ribbon and tag labelling the tree as for her.

As we pulled away, she stood in the window and watched us leave, waving as she always had from her front steps as a visitor backed out of the driveway. “Well, that was actually pretty fun!” my mother posited in an attempt to lift the mood. “I’m glad they’re doing these things for the residents… even though they can’t have visitors, it’s at least something for Christmas.” I wasn’t quite sure how we would break the following silence, until she continued – “She may be sad to see us go, but she might not have even known who it was decorating the tree. And in twenty minutes she’ll look out her window and think Oh! Someone left me a Christmas tree, it even has my name on it!” I fiddled with the small stack of hermit cookies in my hands, three palm-sized treats wrapped in foil, and swallowed the lump in my throat. My cold hands squeezed the packaging just a little bit tighter, attempting, idly, against the odds, to prevent the cookies from going stale. To have them for just a bit longer.