Sip by Sip

Chapter Six: Wooden Spoon

    Tuesday it rained. Traffic was bad for him, and he worried he'd be late. He was also worried that it would set the wrong mood. Agitation wasn't a great way to start the morning.

    When he finally arrived, Gemma was waiting, quite patiently he noted, with a boiling bowl soup in front of her. He believed soup wasn't really a morning thing, and was surprised that the cafe even sold it. He had never acknowledged that the coffee shop sold anything other than coffee.

"When I was younger my Grandma made the best soup," she raved as he sat down. No greeting, no asking why he was late.

He wasn't sure how to respond to that. He thought about questioning it, but he was pretty sure she didn't want to be questioned. So he stayed silent and waited for her to continue.

"She'd make it on rainy days like this. She was some sort of psychic, because she always knew when I was coming over, even when I hadn't called. She'd have the soup ready for me, steaming on the table, and all I'd have to do was throw off my coat, sit down and eat."

"She sounds nice." As he said it, he knew it sounded lame. But he didn't care how lame it was, as long as it showed he was listening.

She nodded distantly. "She had this thing about spoons. She would never let me drink her soups with metal spoons. She would say, 'The metal spoon will burn your lips and scorch your taste buds off, and then you won't be able to taste my wonderful soup.' and I would laugh because I always thought that she was kidding. But she wasn't. She'd force me to use a small wooden baby spoon. I'd complain saying, 'Now all I can taste is the wood' and she'd say that wood is merely a flavor of nature and that I should appreciate it. But whenever she said that, I knew she was joking."

He mulled over her words, lost in her queer story.

"She kept on making me soup up until the year before college. When I asked for the recipe so that I could make it myself, she refused to give up her closely guarded secret. But later on that year we had a scare, she had a stroke, and thankfully recovered. But when she did she finally told me what the secret recipe was. She told me that she got it off the internet, and just like that I wished I hadn't asked. The magical qualities, and the mystery to her recipe, was taken away, and it took the beauty out of it."

"But the gesture still remained, didn't it?" He asked, and she didn't respond.

"But one day I was talking with my Grandfather, and I mentioned the soup. When I told him what she told me, he laughed and said that wasn't the entire story. He proceeded to tell me the full story."

"What was it?"

"He said that yes, the recipe was found off the internet, but it was a very important recipe. When I asked why, he answered that my Grandma had found the recipe when using a computer for the first time in her life. That was why it was special to her, because it reminded her of how far the world has come since then."

He was silent for a moment. Her eyes were so bright, yet so wistful, obviously loving and appreciative of her grandparents. "The magic returned a little?" yet in the way he said it he wasn't questioning her. He already knew.

"Yeah. I realized that the recipe itself was magical because my Grandmother had made it magical. Because she thought it was magical."

He smiled at her, and she smiled back at him. "That is what rainy days remind me of," she finished, her voice barely a whisper. He felt that the way she whispered made the story beautiful, magical too. "And it reminds me of little wooden spoons."

He laughed softly, and her eyes shone brighter, and for the rest of the morning they sat, chatting and listening to the rain.