A sick child.
A plain broth soup.
The magic ingredient to make plain soup look good is sprinkles of dried marjoram from her grandmother’s garden.
Imagine the scene in Victorian London, and the broth soup would be beef tea or barley water. For my poor sick twenty-something child, I found a Trader Joe’s box of organic vegetable broth–not enough salt for my taste, but that’s easily fixed.
The best part of that soup was finding a tiny glass jar that my mother had given me almost five years ago labeled “Marjoram 2000.” The green leaf bits inside still held the oregano smell of her summer garden. Putting some in the soup was more than mere decoration.
I remember myself, long ago, lying sick in bed while my mother brought me the prize home remedy of the 1950s–Campbell’s chicken soup, with noodles or rice. Her own real soups were too rich or too garlicky for any unhappy stomach.
Some day, maybe, I’ll get to be the grandmother, with time enough to plant herbs and tend them and dry them and pack them in shiny glass jars saved from mustard or pickles or jam.
Right now, in between, I’d like to thank both my daughter and my mother for a truly magical moment today in my kitchen.