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Cooking with my daughter, I see her limitations become strengths.

Grocery shopping and cooking help Amy find her way in the world.

Illustration by Gracia Lam

In the kitchen, cooking with my daughter, Amy, I often remember my mother. It’s an irony Mother would appreciate. She died many years ago, but as our mothers do, she lives in my memory. Mother saw preparing meals as a duty, and not a particularly enjoyable one. She assiduously avoided the kitchen. Fixing food was an unwelcome interruption of more important activities — gardening, sewing, playing wild games of quadruple solitaire with her three children.

“After all,” she once told me, “you spend time in the kitchen, people eat, and what’s left? Dirty dishes.”

For much of my life, I saw no reason to disagree.

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But cooking is no longer an infringement on other activities. It is something my daughter and I do together, something we can participate in equally.

Abstractions usually elude Amy. But she never misses a bird or a sunset or the glory of the everyday. Though her syntax is awkward, her pronouncements are full of energy.

“Oh, the sky, look at the sky, the clouds are rushing, where are they going?”

“Mother, I waited two hours!”

“But, Amy, I’m only ten minutes late.”

“That’s what you say me, Mom! No clock, no watch. I feel how long time is it.”

Since her birth more than 40 years ago, Amy has survived complicated surgeries, spent endless months in rehab centers, and endured painful therapies. Her gait is imperfect, but she walks unassisted. She is learning to live away from home, but she will never be able to live without adult supervision.

Together Amy and I do things that are sometimes new to me. Cooking is one. Amy loves the rituals of the kitchen: reading simple cookbooks, checking cupboards, making a shopping list, going to the supermarket. We read directions, assemble ingredients, line up bowls and baking dishes. We mix and stir. Amy is a connoisseur of brownie mixes, prepackaged veggie burgers, spaghetti sauces of all kinds.

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Egg salad is one of her specialties. She likes to instruct me as we get out the eggs: “Now, Mother, don’t cook eggs too long and forget that mustard, only mayonnaise. That is best way ever. OK?”

My mother loved her garden, digging in the warm earth, the sun hot on her back. Her tomatoes and carrots were wonderful, but nothing could match the cucumbers, firm and fleshy, never dry or coarse inside. Cucumbers fresh from Mother’s garden, crisp and still warm from the sun, were my favorite snack. The clear, delicate flavor lingered on my tongue.

I grew up knowing that the best food was food someone you knew had grown or caught or picked or dug up on the beach — simple and fresh. Preparation was a secondary thing.

I have no sunny space for a vegetable garden, but my summer is incomplete without food fresh from the earth. Most Saturdays, Amy and I go to the farmers’ market on the way to her favorite big chain grocery store. At the outdoor market I hunt for the juiciest tomatoes, the crispest peas, the sweetest corn. I dawdle, searching for the perfect cucumber. If I find one, I’ll leave it on the kitchen windowsill to catch the sun. Amy and I will eat it while we fix lunch.

Amy tries to be patient. She knows I love examining the various offerings, talking with the growers. But patience does not come easily; it never has. She pulls me toward the car. “Now, Mother, come right now! I found my recipe. We made our list. We have to hurry. We need to cook!”

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My feet are light as Amy drags me away, both of us laughing. Like food fresh from the garden, unanticipated joys have a rare sweetness. They linger, clear and delicate in the heart.

Susan McGee Bailey lives in Wellesley. She directed the Wellesley Centers for Women for 25 years before retiring to write and learn new skills with, and from, her daughter. Send comments to connections@globe.com.


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