Sometimes I will switch purses and come across an old forgotten notebook or journal. When I find the journal, I begin reading not in the middle but on the first page to remind myself of where I was when I began that journal–physically, mentally, emotionally and geographically. The subject of my writing– a scene at an airport, sounds of nature or something totally imaginary — will give away my whereabouts and state of mind and I am transported back to myself at that point in time with a newly gleaned perspective. Then there are the times when I have no idea. I have left no crumbs or clues for myself, no details that give away what I was writing about, where I was or what mood I was in. Having no recollection of actually writing it, sometimes I wonder if the words in my journal were really written by me. Because I am a skeptic and because I’ve learned better than to believe I’ll remember things, I’ve recently taught and trained myself to write where I was, what I was doing and what that was all about. I try to remember to include the date. Still, I have years of pages of unknown entries.
The other day I came across one of these anonymous scrawlings. It was in my black notebook with a Day of the Dead skull on the front: a recipe for what was entitled “Yuletide Fruitcake” written in pink pen. Fruitcake? I thought. Really? No one even likes fruitcake (myself the rare exception), much less goes to the trouble of making it. I stared blankly at it–an old friend whose name I could not quite remember.
Fruitcake reminds me mostly of my grandmother in Mississippi. How, when we were kids, she’d send us a big box of goodies with peanut brittle, fudge, a strange white sweet called Divinity and of course, a fruitcake wrapped in a moist cheesecloth. My dad and I were the only ones to eat it. My sisters and mother did not care for it. But Dad and I, we’d ration it, so we wouldn’t devour it in one sitting, savoring a slice–maybe two–each evening after dinner during the Christmas season.
Grandmother is the only person I know who makes fruitcake. That was when I remembered: the last time I’d gone to visit her in Gulfport, I went through her recipes. I found the fruitcake recipe and wrote it down, an artifact of my childhood and Christmases past.
Yuletide Fruitcake
1 lb candied cherries, cut in half
1 lb candied pineapple, diced
1 qt. pecans (4 cups)
1 1/2 c. sugar
3 c. self-rising flour
6 eggs
1/2 lb butter
1/2 t. lemon flavoring
1/2 t. vanilla flavoring
1/2 t. almond flavoring
Dredge the fruit in one cup of flour and set aside. Cream butter and sugar, separate eggs and add well-beaten egg yolks to butter and sugar mixture. Add 2 cups flour, then add fruit and nuts alternately. Stir in extract and beaten egg whites. Bake in well-greased tube pan at 275 degrees for 2 hours or until brown.
Grandmother has important things she wants to remember written down on the inside of her kitchen cupboards. In pencil, in dark black marker, open her pantry and you’ll find recipes, lists, Bible verses, words to live by. Nearby there might be an old yellowed newspaper clipping of some sort, something she’s long memorized but never bothered to take down. They’ve been there for as long as I remember, except that I never thought much of them until I got older. She uses her cupboards the way I use the pages of my journal. I write things down because I feel the need to record them somewhere outside myself. Perhaps like my grandmother, I write things down because I don’t want to forget them. I want them to live on, to keep forever, like a good fruitcake.
