I Made It And It Tasted Wrong

You did it. That is the part nobody has said to you.

You took the card out, and you stood in that kitchen, and you followed every line of it in order, and you made the thing. After all this time. You did the difficult part.

And then you tasted it and it was not her.

It was close. That is somehow worse than if it had been miles off. It was close enough that your mouth went looking for the rest of it and did not find it, and something went through you that you were not braced for, and you put the spoon down and stood there.

And you have not made it since. And you have not told anybody, because the sentence would be I tried and it did not work, and that sentence sounds so small next to what actually happened in that room.

So let me say the first thing plainly, before anything about a kitchen.

This is about her and the cooking is second.

Nothing here is going to tell you where you went wrong, or offer a technique that would get it closer. And nothing here is going to tell you what she would have wanted, or that she would be glad you tried. If you read this to the end and decide never to make it again, that is a complete and good ending and this article will say so.

This I recall to my mind, therefore have I hope

There is a line in Lamentations that sits in the middle of the bleakest book in the Bible.

This I recall to my mind, therefore have I hope. (Lamentations 3:21, King James Version)

This I recall to my mind.

The word recall is doing something. It is deliberate. It is a man choosing to bring one thing back, in the middle of a book where nothing has been resolved and nothing has been explained.

And notice what it is not. It is not the memory arriving on its own, which is what happens to you in that kitchen. It is a decision to go and get one.

You are able to choose what gets brought back rather than only receive what arrives, and a memory that ambushed you at a stove has never once been the only one available. Lamentations 3:21 has a man deliberately recall something in an unresolved book, and the Holy Spirit is the one present with a woman who put a spoon down and stood there.

And look at where the hope sits in the sentence.

Therefore have I hope. It comes after the recalling and because of it, which means in that verse hope is downstream of an act rather than a feeling that arrives first and enables the act.

Nobody waits to feel hopeful. Something is recalled, and then there is hope, in that order.

You have an order available rather than a mood to wait for, and hope has never once been the thing that has to arrive before anything can be done. The Spirit of God is the one with somebody who has not been back to that pan since, and Lamentations 3:21 puts the recalling first and the hope after it.

What the taste actually told you

Here is the second part, and it is about what happened in your mouth rather than what happened in the pan.

The gap you tasted was real. It was not your imagination and it was not a failure of skill, and here is the reason: what was missing was not an ingredient. It was her hands, her particular heat, thirty years of her doing it without thinking, and the fact that her table was under the plate when it got eaten.

None of that is in any list. None of it could have been written down. And no amount of getting closer would have supplied it, because it was never in the food.

So what you tasted was the actual size of the absence. That is a terrible thing to taste and it is not a report on your cooking.

You were given the size of it rather than a verdict on your hands, and a gap that no ingredient could fill has never once been a thing you did wrong. Lamentations 3:21 sits inside a book that resolves nothing and finds a way to recall something anyway, and the Holy Spirit is the one with a woman who tasted exactly what was missing.

And here is the part that matters most, and it is permission. You do not have to make it again. Not this week, not ever, and not because you failed. Some people make it a second time and something shifts, because the second time nobody is expecting her. And some people never make it again and keep the card, and that ending is not a lesser one.

The only thing worth doing this week is taking the card out and reading it out loud. The rest stays open.

You have permission for this to end at the reading, and never making it again has never once been the smaller version of anything. The Spirit of God is the one at that drawer with a woman who is free either way, and Lamentations 3:21 makes the recalling a choice rather than a duty.

What this week is, with that card

So here is the assignment, and most of it is not cooking. Take the card out, read it out loud, and cook it again this week or decide not to.

Out loud is the part that matters. The card has been evidence of a bad evening since that night, and reading it aloud puts it back to being her words in her order, said in a living voice in a kitchen, which is what it was before it became a receipt.

It will be difficult, and that is the point rather than an accident.

You are taking a card back from one evening, and a page read out loud has never once stayed only the record of a bad night. Lamentations 3:21 goes and gets one thing on purpose, and the Holy Spirit is the one in that kitchen with a woman reading her mother's lines aloud.

Then the second half, which is genuinely open. Cook it again this week, or decide not to. If you cook it, know before you start that it will not taste like hers this time either, and that this is not the test. It was never going to taste like hers and that was never available. What is available is a thing she wrote being made by somebody who loved her, which is a different and perfectly good object. And if you decide not to, say that out loud too, and put the card back.

You are making her dish rather than reproducing her, and food that never tasted like hers has never once been a failure toward her. The Spirit of God is the one at that stove with a woman who knows in advance what it will taste like, and Lamentations 3:21 finds hope on the far side of a deliberate act.