For my grandma, Babcia
The first time you had asked me if I wanted to help you bake a babka, I readily agreed because I couldn’t think of anything more soothing than assisting you with something you had always done alone. The recipe called for flour and eggs, so there I stood, flour smeared up my arms because my competence in baking was weak as a 9-year-old, and you intervened because if I couldn’t pour flour, then I couldn’t crack an egg without spilling its contents and shattering the shell. My favorite part was the fine vanilla powder that you used in place of extract. Each time you turned back to the sink, I would dip my finger into the orange bag and lick off however much of the saccharine dust had managed to cling to it. Finally, you mixed the chocolate and vanilla batter to make the dessert marmurkowa, a marbling pattern appearing as the spatula handle danced and gyrated around and around the bowl. I watched the two parts of the batter swirl together, like your guiding hand around mine, like the lavender folds of your sundress that fell to the floor and intermingled with my feet on the stepstool.
***
Photographs preserve the yellowing pages of a fairytale heirloom, the grinning sun and moon that coaxed me past the cover, and your salmon-colored slippers that I wore on the porch despite the flapping sound, a result of then-smaller feet. But my brain harbors a memory of bicolored-batter swirled together, like your guiding hand around mine, like the lavender folds of your sundress that fell to the floor, intermingling with my feet on the stepstool.
***
The grains of a babka marmurkowa are the grains of a brief memory, a memory that can be captured only in photographs and poems.