Memories and Proposal Brownies

I'm making my world famous "proposal" brownies tonight. We are having dinner with some friends this weekend and we were asked to bring dessert. I found the recipe in my mom's old recipe box years ago. The most important recipes were kept in her blue gingham cookbook, the pages covered in a mix of my mom's hand writing and my grandmother's. The recipes she saw from a magazine or the newspaper that caught her eye? Those ended up in the newer tin. Not to be confused with the older tin that had hand written recipe cards from friends. The world we used to live in feels so at odds with the way we live now, doesn't it?  Now, I google everything and pick the recipe that looks best! I don't even read the reviews!! Back then, you knew the recipe was probably good if it was hand written on a card; the probability increased if the recipe card had food stains on it. 

I don't know where the brownie recipe truly came from. It might have been a friend, but I can't recall if there was a name on it. I do remember that it was written on the side of a square tissue box. (It was that, or the back side of a greeting card. The truth might be lost on this one.) Simple recipe, very few instructions. Butter. Sugar, Vanilla. Eggs. Flour. There was a time in my life when I made them so frequently that, even though I always pulled the recipe card out, I never needed it. The recipe moved with me when I graduated college. At one point, the recipe made it into the Notes app on my iPod Touch as a back up, something I'm grateful for because eventually I misplaced the card. However, somewhere in the last 10 years, that iPod crashed and I've been unable to restore it. I panicked, thinking all was lost. I found it in an email draft and it is now replicated in my iPhone Notes app, the instructions almost completely removed.

I don't know when I started making them, but my earliest memory is of them being the biggest hit in my church youth group. This is also where they got their name. It was James, because, of course it was. James was 4 years younger than me, so we didn't always run in the same circles, but I guarantee you knew a James. Loud (bless him). Silly. The first person to make you laugh because he never stopped joking around. He was the energy behind everyone. Played drums (again, because of course he did). Again, how it started, I'll never remember, but I have a vivid memory of him, walking down the church hallway with a mouth full of brownie asking me to marry him. 

Now. There is a small chance that this is an amalgamation of memories. The main reason I say this is because the church had a pretty strict policy about food in other parts of the church that were not the Fellowship Hall. Nevertheless, it is the memory I will continue to keep. 

This brownie marriage proposal joke was perpetuated for what felt like years, though I can't really remember how long it went on for. It was a joke that James told. It was a joke that James' friends told. It was a joke that James' mother started telling (to this day, I'm still not sure how much of it she believed and how much of it she repeated because it made everyone laugh). I became very secretive of my recipe, to the point where I would kindly refuse to share the recipe with even close friends. Select friends received the recipe (on a recipe card to put in the Very Important Recipe Box) and a bag of chocolate chips as a wedding present. 

James died 14 years ago almost exactly. It's funny, the last few years have passed by with just a small blip in my heart every March. The first five years were excruciating. 

I wonder who James would have married. Would she have minded if we were all friends still who joked about getting married to each other (even though there was never much of a chance of that happening. Sorry bud.) Would I have given her the brownie recipe if only because it was James? What would he make of MY marriage? 

Remember how I said James was 4 years younger and I didn't run in his circle too much? That all changed after he died. Our friend group got smaller and closer. Suddenly, I was a college graduate hanging out with and enjoying spending time with college freshmen. It didn't seem to bother us, though. And then, by some weird twist of fate,  one of those college freshmen started to fall in love with me. I was very much against it, for the record. I did not make things easy for him. But we became friends. Good friends. Genuine friends. 

And, as they say, one thing lead to another, and well, here we are. Married for almost 11 months. And I can almost hear James laughing at it all.

 The brownies don't get made nearly as often as they used to these days. Sugar is, of course, the enemy. Carbs are the enemy. Chocolate is the enemy. Take your pick of whatever health craze is in vogue at the moment. They are only made for special events because if I made a pan of brownies for myself I would eat the entire pan too quickly. My self control is just not that good. (And I don't think my husband's is any better.) 

 I don't think the brownies brought me my husband. I don't think he married me for my brownies, even though he is a massive fan. But they did help me make friends and brought laughter and joy into my life, and I'll never forget it. Not for one single day. 

 

P.S. I wrote this blog more than a year and a half ago. I find myself making my brownies again and I remembered that I wrote this and never published it. I'm very out of practice (both baking and writing) and I'm feeling the awareness of that as I get ready to hit "publish". I've probably edited this piece more than any other piece I've ever written (including my senior thesis in college), but it still feels like something is missing. It feels unresolved. The grief is still there, when I think about and remember James. Marriage is still new in areas. Life keeps going. We wake up each day and try again, grateful even in the darkness of the season to be given a new day. 

Maybe that is why this post feels unresolved -- the story isn't over. Each day adds more chapters to the story and I'm waiting for the resolution of all the questions and unknowns to unfold. It's like the last few chapters of the murder mystery novel (The Thursday Murder Club by Richard Osman, of late) where all the pieces fall into place, connections are made, motives revealed, and justice is served, if you are very lucky. Or maybe I'm just wildly out of practice and that's the reason it feels like something is missing. Maybe the feeling will go away after I publish; maybe it won't. Maybe five posts from now it will feel better. That's the thing with stories-- you need to eventually turn the page if you want to find out what happens next. This is me, turning the page. 

P. P. S. When you find a good recipe, do your future self a favor and write it down or print it out. I went to look for a recipe on a website that I have been using for the last few years and it was just gone. Poof. I got a 404 error and my heart sank. The internet is wild and wonderful, but much more wild these days and the days are not long enough to continually look up new recipes for something you love only to have your heart broken. So please, write it down. Save it. I'll even buy you a binder or tin to keep them in.