I've been trying to write about Go-Go's ease and skill in the kitchen, which were substantial. She was confident, arrogant, even, in her insistence that two shakes was a teaspoon, and a handful, a cup. She refused to measure. I suppose she measured when she baked, but she didn't do much of that by the time I came along, the seventh of eight.
When I was hired as a cook, at twenty years old, in a small restaurant in Seattle, the owner was really impressed that I could make a pot of soup without reading a recipe, or by merely giving it a glance. "You have to cook to taste, she insisted" and Go-Go was in complete agreement.
She liked to throw a party and usually did it by cooking up some big feast to go along with the booze. If more people showed up than she planned for, she would announce "FHB!" which stood for "family hold back." I reminded her of it a year or so before she died and, like so many of my memories, she adamantly denied ever saying it. That's one of those things that used to drive me crazy. I wanted our memories to line up, for her to say "wow, I remember that too," or "that must have sucked." But that would not have been her way, and now I know that just because she didn't remember it, doesn't mean it didn't happen.
Recently Roger called to tell me had given away her baking pans to a friend of his. "What was I going to do with them?" he wondered out loud in our conversation. His nonchalance at one of the things she was good at, sent a searing pain through my heart. It was one more reminder that she, and her beloved tiny baking pans, have passed.
