Zibby Mag

By Hilary Locker Fussteig

I cheated on my mom’s chicken soup.

When I was thirty and my mother was losing her cognition to dementia, I asked her to write down her most celebrated recipes — those that weren’t in any cookbooks. She was leaving me but I couldn’t let her depart without, among other things, acquiring her culinary secrets.

Chief among them: her chicken soup. It was the stuff of legend, on the table often and always at holidays. Beautiful matzo balls bathed alongside fine egg noodles, bobbing soup mandels, sometimes kreplach, and — for very special occasions — swimming swans that Mom fashioned out of spongy dough. Bowls of warmth. Nutrition. Healing. Love. My mother used to say that I glowed after I ate her soup. Indeed, my cheeks warmed and flushed as if there were oxytocin in each spoonful.

Once Mom was gone, it took many tries and some tears to master her soup but eventually, I got the proportions and seasonings just right. I laminated the recipe card she’d given me in order to safeguard her handwriting, and I added my notes and clarifications (how much salt, how much pepper — Mom had jotted only “salt and pepper”) on a hot-pink Post-it.

I had lost my mother but I still had this legacy, and I was gratified and relieved to know that my children would too. Every pot would be an opportunity to tell them, “This is Grandma Ruth’s recipe” and then launch into some funny or sweet story about her.

“Did I ever tell you about the time I had Grandma Ruth, who was a teacher, paged in her classroom because our new puppy peed on the rug and I couldn’t find the stain remover?”

“Yes, Mom,” my kids would reply.

“Her class cracked up. She was mortified!”

Six years after my mother died, my older son’s preschool teacher and I were comparing matzo ball soup notes ahead of Rosh Hashanah. She told me a trick her mother had passed along to her: put two chickens in the pot. Two! Blasphemy. She promised that it intensified the flavor and hue of the soup. I love to cook and I’m always game to try new recipes. But could I, in good faith, add this second bird? Was there not something duplicitous about adopting maternal wisdom from someone else’s mother?

The bond between Mom and me was centered around food. We enjoyed cooking and baking together and trying new cuisines. Even a trip to the grocery store was a bona fide adventure if we did it together, often spending three hours (yes, three) wandering the aisles of Super Stop & Shop. Mom transmitted love and affection through cooking, and so I felt there was something sacred about her recipes. Tampering with them would be tantamount to treason.

And yet several months later, I had the chutzpah to dump two chickens in my pot. There was no denying that this soup was tastier and more golden than the sun. From that time on, I supplemented Mom’s soup with another chicken. The betrayal was complete.

When my kids were old and bold enough to try someone else’s chicken soup besides mine, I felt the sting. Every Passover, my sister-in-law’s mother-in-law, Sue, threw an enormous, elaborate, and gorgeous seder. There were magnificently set tables for forty guests, matzo place cards, at least fifteen main dishes and sides, and a dessert buffet so extravagant we all but rolled home.

And soup. There was soup. Sue’s chicken soup didn’t look like mine. It was creamy and it had lots of chicken (my mother saved the chicken for other dishes and served a pure clear broth), plus tricolor matzo balls — some yellow, some pink, and some green. My boys, Jake and Matthew, decided to try it — one then the other — and fell under its spell.

Could I, in good faith, add this second bird? Was there not something duplicitous about adopting maternal wisdom from someone else’s mother?

To be fair, it was delectable. What was that spice — curry? I couldn’t put my finger on it. And what could possibly explain spumoni-tinted matzo balls? Heresy. But my children demanded that I recreate this masterpiece at home. We left that night with containers of soup, lovingly ladled out by Sue for my boys to enjoy for days to come.

The next day I asked her for the recipe. There is no real recipe, she replied. She e-mailed me a list of ingredients, including “LOTS of chicken.” I was reminded of my grandmother giving my mom her “recipe” for potato kugel: “matzo meal, onions, oil, eggs, baking soda, salt, pepper.” No quantities, no instructions, and, inconceivably, no mention of potatoes. I went to work, simmering batch after batch.

“No,” said my boys. “It’s not the same.” Over and over. Until one day, years later, I hit the jackpot. “This is it!” Jake and Matthew exclaimed. “You finally did it!” They slurped and gulped and Matthew licked his bowl clean.

But this was a bridge too far. First, I’d disrespected my mom’s soup by adding a second chicken to it. Now, I was a veritable traitor because my kids preferred Nana’s soup to their grandmother’s. That’s right. Nana.

Sue isn’t “just” my sister-in-law’s mother-in-law. Both of my kids’ grandmas passed away when they were very young. My boys automatically called Sue “Nana,” exactly as they saw their cousins do. I wasn’t about to correct them, and no one else in our family did either. Once, after feeling awkward for so long, I approached Sue and asked her if this was okay. She assured me that it was.

My kids were lucky to feel like they had a grandmother — especially one who fed them so well. I was grateful, but I harbored guilt over the nomenclature. Where was my mother in all of this? Gone, supplanted. Her own grandkids were calling someone else Nana, and they favored her chicken soup over their own stock. What could be more significant, more defining, more of a measure of Jewish grandmotherhood than chicken soup?

She is not my mom, and I am not her daughter, but here we are.

There was something else at work here. I had lost my mother, and Sue had lost — many years prior — her daughter. She is close with her daughter-in-law, but I suppose when mothers lose daughters and daughters lose mothers, there is a bottomless void that we attempt to fill with as many willing surrogates as possible. Our relationship, on some level, met those needs.

We never spoke of it, not until I asked her to read this essay.

She and I have enjoyed each other’s company and been together through many of our respective ups and downs; we’ve traded entertaining tips, gone for walks, and visited museums. She was there at the hospital after my first child was born, hand-knitted baby blanket in tow. She has taken my boys to Chinatown, she came to a summer house we rented, and she has hosted us countless times for swimming and barbecues.

She is not my mom, and I am not her daughter, but here we are. Once, in 2016 when I was at a chemo infusion for breast cancer and Sue was by my side, she said that she didn’t really know what we were to each other but that she felt like an aunt.

We don’t choose our family, but sometimes life chooses them for us in some fateful, mysterious way. My kids have never known my mom, and they still prefer Sue’s matzo ball soup to hers, a fact that I have come to accept, even though, to this day, I still feel a twinge of guilt. Blood may be thicker than water, yet Sue’s — Nana’s — chicken soup is thicker and richer than I ever could have wished for.

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Hilary Locker Fussteig is a former editor at Parenting magazine.