I just saw this television commercial. Can’t even remember what they were advertising, but it featured a daughter calling her mom (or mother-in-law) to help her with the ingredients for the stuffing she was making for Thanksgiving dinner.

When the call ended, the father said to the mother something like, “She’s made that stuffing for years.” And the mother just smiled and took his hand in hers. It’s not that the daughter NEEDED to call, but that she WANTED to call.

And I thought, “Who will I call this year?” All the women I called while cooking my holiday meals are gone now. Their breadth and depth of knowledge gone with them. The smiles in their voices when I asked some dumb question about deviled eggs or giblet gravy, even though I knew the answers by heart. I just wanted to feel closer to them even though we were hundreds…