Sara Etgen-Baker

Sara Etgen-Baker’s love for words began when, as a young girl, her mother read the dictionary to her every night. A teacher’s unexpected whisper, “You’ve got writing talent,” ignited her writing desire. Her manuscripts have won several contests and have been published in numerous anthologies including Wisdom Has A Voice, Times They Were A Changing: Women Remember the 60s & 70s. Others have appeared in SCN’s True Words Anthology, Looking Back Magazine, Guideposts, Chicken Soup for the Soul, Halcyon Magazine, Page & Spine, Perspectives Magazine, and The Storyteller. Sara enjoys her participation with the Story Circle Network, the National Association of Memoir Writers, and the National League of American Pen Women—Dallas Branch. She’s currently working on her first novel, Secrets at Dillehay Crossing, and hopes to finish in 2015.

Wings of Creativity

Sara Etgen-Baker

In 2010 my mother-in-law gave me her rather simple but graceful, antique secretarial desk. I was delighted to have it; and for four years now, I’ve cherished this nostalgic piece, for it both served and inspired me as I began my writing journey.

The antique desk was comfortable, and I felt so cozy when I began each writing session. Although I quickly outgrew the desk, I was unwilling to give it up and acquire a larger desk. Despite the desk’s comfort and coziness, its limited storage capacity meant that I often scattered file folders and books on the floor around me. But I also crave organization and closure.

So after each writing session I painstakingly gathered up the scattered tools of the trade and placed them in one the desk's three drawers until the next writing session. And because I’m also a creature of habit and routine, I repeated this process hundreds of times—much like a batter who comes to home plate and repeats a similar process each time he prepares to swing at the first pitch.

I accepted this process as the way I entered into and exited my writing mode. Subconsciously, I convinced myself that the desk and the rhythm of my routine were my lucky charms and that I somehow needed them in order to continue to be successful.

Now fast forward to the summer of 2014. My husband, Bill, and I moved into a new home. While unpacking, he offered—on more than one occasion—to buy me a new desk. But much to his dismay, I ignored his offers—like the day we stopped at Staples to shop for office supplies.

Bill escorted me to the back of the Staples showroom where he’d found what he thought was THE perfect desk for me. “I’ll want to buy this for you, Sweetie. My writer needs a bigger desk.” He hugged me. “You know you deserve it.”

“But I don’t want a bigger desk!” I turned and walked away. “I like my little desk.”

“I don’t understand. Why don’t you want a bigger desk?” He scurried to my side. “You must be afraid of something? What is it? You can tell me.”

“Whatever do you mean? I’m not afraid of anything. What makes you say that?” I folded my arms across my chest and looked him straight in the eyes. “Like I said, I really like my little desk. I’m satisfied with it; it inspires me. Besides, we just moved; I’ve experienced enough change. Changing to a bigger desk will just mess with my writing mojo. So don’t ask me again!”

And he didn’t ask me again. Then a few days later while working in my new office (Yes, moving meant that I acquired my own office.), I looked around at the folders, books, and papers strewn all over my office floor. I riffled through several stacks and couldn’t find what I needed to meet a contest deadline. My heart raced, and beads of sweat appeared on my forehead—the telltale signs that I’ve allowed panic and fear to take hold. I leaned back in my chair, took a deep breath, and looked around my office. The room literally swallowed the tiny desk making it look a wee bit insignificant and slightly out of place. Hmmm. Maybe I do need a bigger desk. But the idea of graduating to a bigger desk sent tiny shock waves through my brain. So perhaps Bill was right. Was I afraid of something? If so, what was it?

Unable to continue writing, I closed my laptop; stood up; and paced around the room. I looked around and focused my attention on the certificates, awards, and checks that I’d framed and hung on the wall. When I began writing, I never imagined the success that now stared back at me. Each represented either an exciting moment or a significant step forward in my writing career. I was both thrilled and content with the level of success I’d achieved.

I closed my eyes and relived the vulnerability and fear I sometimes felt as a new writer. Often when I sat down to write, I didn’t know exactly what I was going to write or where I was going on my writing journey. But during the past four years, I trained myself to love both the ambiguity and the not knowing.

I smiled, returned to my chair, and retrieved C. Joy Bell C’s book of poetry, All Things Dance Like Dragonflies, from the bookshelf. I flipped through its pages, and her words about faith jumped off the page into my heart:

“I have come to accept the feeling of not knowing where I am going. And I have trained myself to love it. Because it is only when we are suspended in mid-air with no landing in sight, that we force our wings to unravel and alas begin our flight. And as we fly, we still may not know where we are going to. But the miracle is in the unfolding of the wings. You may not know where you're going, but you know that so long as you spread your wings, the winds will carry you.”

At that moment I recognized that a bigger desk symbolized bigger projects, bigger dreams, more challenging contests, and being once again suspended in mid-air with no landing in sight.

Bill was right, of course. I was afraid—afraid to force my complacent writing wings to once more unravel and begin a new flight. C. Joy Bell C’s words helped me grasp at a deeper level that once I spread my wings anew, I could trust that the winds of creativity would carry me further where I need to go.

Two days ago my new desk arrived. And, yes, my wings already feel stronger!

No Need to Bother With the Recipe

Sara Etgen-Baker

After my Grandmother Stainbrook died, my mother requested only one item from her mother’s possessions. “All I really want are her old recipe cards and antique file box,” my mother told my uncle. My mother’s request puzzled me, for I knew that my mother didn’t need the recipe cards and file box for any practical reason. She’d known for decades how to make my grandmother’s pumpernickel bread, sauerkraut, and her breakfast specialty—streusel kuchen.

But when the file box arrived a few days later, my mother stopped what she was doing and sat down at her kitchen table where she gingerly opened the box. As she sniffed its contents, her eyes brightened. “It smells just like my mother’s kitchen!” She handed me the box. “Take a whiff. Don’t you agree?”

“Yes.” I smiled and squeezed her hand.

Then for the next several hours I sat with her, and together we pored over the box’s contents. We discovered recipe cards, photos, mementos, and handwritten notes as well as newspaper and magazine clippings including an 8 cent coupon for Mazola Margarine. The file box also had all sorts of tabs to categorize recipes, yet there was no discernible organization to the box’s contents. Apparently, my grandmother and I shared the same familial talent for recipe organization. There was a futile attempt at arrangement, but the separation of meat dishes from desserts had long since been abandoned.

Instead, the jumbled recipe cards and the memorabilia were a road map of my grandmother’s life—a life that had survived two world wars, the Great Depression, and encompassed a long marriage that included raising four children who had gone on to have their own children. I closed my eyes and imagined her long before she was a grandmother when she was a young bride, then as a mother of four flipping through the cards trying to prepare a meal to fill her children’s bellies during the Depression.

As I rummaged through the yellowed, timeworn recipe cards, a heartwarming aroma filled my nostrils. The cards smelled like long ago used spices over an underlying mustiness. The recipe cards were dog-eared, stained, and written in my grandmother’s penmanship—the same penmanship I’d seen so many times on the letters, cards, and notes she’d sent me. The cards were spattered with grease stains and marked with thumbprints. And the hand in which they were written had visibly changed between the first recipe and the latter ones.

As my fingers graced the same cards hers had many years ago, I remembered hearing her say, “Oh, sweetie, this is my favorite way to make streusel kuchen. Just watch and learn. No need to bother with the recipe card.”

Yet when my mother and I cooked in my mother’s kitchen, we often referred to my grandmother’s recipe cards. Frequently, though, the cards just listed the ingredients without exact quantities. All too often the recipe’s vague language frustrated me. “Mother,” I’d ask, “What does use enough flour to make stiff dough mean? Exactly how much is a pinch of salt?” What is a scant of this? Exactly how much is a spoonful? And, what does simmer until it smells heavenly mean?

“A good cook should know the basics,” she’d reply. “Besides, recipes aren’t meant to be precise; they’re merely meant to jog the memory of how to make those dishes.”

“Well, if the recipes aren’t accurate why do you use them?” I’d frown then glare at her. “Besides, you know the recipes by heart so why do you keep the cards?”

“True. Your grandmother’s recipes are inexact and slightly out-of-date. And, yes, I can make most of your grandmother’s recipes with my eyes closed.” She’d pause then her eyes would fill with tears. “I guess I just don’t have the heart to throw away the recipes and file box.”

“But why?” I’d shrug and shake my head.

“I suppose I want to study the original recipe. I just can’t explain it to you.” She’d turn away from me and continue cooking.

All too often I watched my mother take out a single recipe card and just linger over it. I soon realized that perhaps the knowledge the cards evoked wasn’t limited to the information contained in their instructions. Maybe she just wanted to hear her mother’s voice and remember the past.

Perhaps holding my grandmother’s recipe card while she stirred and sifted allowed my mother to recall the precious intangible ingredients with which the finished product would be imbued. Most certainly my grandmother’s recipe box was—like those inexact instructions—the thing that jogged my mother’s memory.

Although my grandmother was a stoic German women who wouldn’t have poured her heart into a diary, her recipe file box was the nearest approximation and the most intimate thing she left behind. It was full of time, memories, and love; it was bigger than her. It was also an accidental charter of her family’s history, values, and traditions rendered on 3-by-5 inch index cards that my mother deeply cherished. Once my grandmother died, perhaps mother simply needed the recipe’s intangible context—the years of experience, life, and circumstance that had brought it to the family.

So, when my mother passed away a few years ago the only items of hers I really wanted were her cookbooks and, of course, my grandmother’s recipe cards and the heirloom file box. I would have cherished them just as my mother had. However, the recipe cards and antique box disappeared just as my mother’s memory did. I can only assume that when my brothers went through mother’s belongings that they saw little value in the dog-eared, limp, and yellowed recipes.

They didn’t understand that my grandmother’s file box and recipe cards were more powerful than unearthing an old photo album or cherished piece of clothing with the lingering scent of her perfume. That box and its contents had given me the opportunity to peek into my grandmother’s everyday life and better understand family. Without it, the connection to my mother line was severed, and I suddenly felt a tremendous loss—a loss my brothers simply didn’t understand.

Over the years, I absorbed the loss, cherished the memories, and moved forward. Sometimes, though, I wish that I had gone through my grandmother’s file box with my mother. Now that I’m in my 60s, I often want to hear my mother’s stories of cooking alongside my grandmother and learn about my family, its values, and its traditions.

Other times, I want nothing more than to step back in time and smell my grandmother’s cooking. Occasionally, I can picture her taking the streusel kuchen out of her oven with her old red and yellow oven mitts, placing it on the table, and serving me a much-too-generous portion.

Once in a while, I yearn for the taste of my grandmother’s streusel kuchen; and although I don’t have her recipe card, I can still re-create her recipe in my head. When I do bake her streusel kuchen, I breathe in the sweet aroma of yeast, cinnamon, and sugar as it drifts through the air in my kitchen. I close my eyes and once again find myself back in my grandmother’s kitchen. I pause as my eyes fill with tears. Sometimes, I swear I can hear her voice whispering to me, “Sweetie, you remembered how to make my favorite streusel kuchen! And see, you didn’t need to bother with the recipe.”