I made potato soup for dinner tonight. I don't need to use the recipe card anymore, but the official name of the recipe is: Potato Soup--Gram's Way. I washed the potatoes with one hand, the other arm around the baby on my hip. I did put Eli down briefly when it came to chopping the potatoes. Our knives are dull and I wasn't in the mood to slice through my finger. I'm squeamish about stitches. After the potatoes were in the pot though he was back up on my hip while we stirred and seasoned.

It just made me wonder how many generations of women in my family had made this recipe and stood cooking dinner with a baby on their hip. It was a nice homey thought that made me both happy for carrying on a family recipe and tradition and ridiculously homesick at the same time.

I'm sure my mom has cooked this potato soup recipe while holding one of us girls when we were small. There were four of us, after all, wonder woman she may be, but I think only the touch of our Lord could content four children while dinner was being prepared. There's also a good chance that she's cooked this meal while holding one of her grandchildren as well. I'd also bet that my Aunt Barb has done the same thing with her children. And of course, the recipe was Gram's to begin with and she had four children as well.

There's just something comforting about cooking with a baby on my hip when I know that generation of women in my family have gone before me. And while I can't quite trace my family back this far I'm sure it goes back to the dawn of time that women have been standing over a pot of something for dinner (whether they want to be or not!) and caring for their children while they're doing it from pioneer women cooking along side their wagon trains or in a tiny little cabin with thirty four children back to a cave woman throwing hunks of wooly mammoth into her stone pot back to Eve trying to cook for Adam while holding Cain.

I'm freely moving between fantasy and reality here, I know. I don't even know what the point is. Maybe just that in the hullabaloo that is family life no matter who or when you are it can all be simplified to this: families need to eat and love each other. The rest is just details.

I think that's nice.