A Promise Kept This Christmas

She was a little old immigrant lady. I never knew all of the exact details because she never offered them.

What I knew was this: she cooked and baked like it mattered. No trends, no shortcuts. The kind of baking that shows up every December whether life is tidy or not. The kind that doesn’t loudly announce itself.

Well before Christmas one year, she handed me a recipe. Not as a suggestion, but with a promise:

“You’ll share it,” she said. “Always.” And I said I would.

The recipe wasn’t typed, but neat. Her handwriting was elegant but shaky—careful loops, tilted numbers. A few measurements had to be deciphered, not read. Standing at the counter, comparing the card to the bowl, I wasn’t always sure I had it quite right.

And somehow that felt appropriate. Some things aren’t meant to be handed off perfectly; they’re meant to be worked through. That’s part of the trust, I suppose.

She didn’t ask if I liked peanuts or chocolate, and she didn’t ask if I understood her story. She handed me something useful and assumed I’d be responsible with it. Odd in today’s world.

Recipes like this outlive the hands that wrote them, though. They travel farther than accents, and they apparently even cross borders, as well. They say I was here without ever saying it out loud.

There’s something almost sacramental about that. Not ownership, but stewardship. You don’t improve it, and you don’t brand it. You receive it intact and pass it on the same way.

Love can be generous, but trust is precise. And trust also expects follow-through.

This year, I finally followed through, by putting the recipe on a single page, but in my own handwriting. That’s how it was given to me, and I decided that’s how it was meant to be shared. No commentary, no spin, and no monetization — just the recipe.