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Incarnate Uprooted


I found this simple, charming little recipe book at Dad's house. It's handwritten without a proper title, or perhaps a missing cover. The back reads "This is a collection of recipes from members of the transatlantic brides and parents association November 1976.

I assume it came from Gram somehow, but the history doesn't add up really. She wasn't married to an American, as is the description of that association.

All of these recipes, yorkshire pudding, trifle, toad in the hole, feel like connections to a place, a land, a people that I miss in some deep place that is not consistent with the reality in which I've lived. Gram and Grandad were my only real connection to England and I suppose now that Grandad is gone and Gram's health is a spiraling decline, this book feels like a lifeline. A way to hold on.

I often think about how I might feel when existing in this world, if I were walking on soil and field that my great great great great grandparents stepped on before me. If I sat on the same stone walls, cut wood in the same forests, herded sheep from the same highlands, cooked the same stews looking out at the same moor blowing the same harsh winter wind. Who would I be then? Would I step more assuredly? Would my blood flow more brightly wrapped in the nourishing delight of land it's always known? Would my roots be so deep nothing could rattle so deeply my tender heart? Could I work in the mud in wellies and overalls all day long and not wonder if I was moving my life in the right direction behind a screen and artificial storefronts? Could I plant carnations for my great nan? Roses for my great great nan? And know that their beauty and success had more to do with them than me?

This is incarnate uprooted.