Against all odds, we are sixteen at the table tonight. At the outdoor restaurant in my neighborhood of Brooklyn, glasses clink as we sit under a purple sky on a Saturday evening in early September.

It’s my first time as the family’s hostess.

Cartoon by the author

Across from me, wrapped in a pink shawl to keep her warm against the breeze that carries the coming autumn, sits Gram. She looks at the menu and then up at me. “Well, what are you going to have?” I ask her.

“I’m going to try the steak,” she says. Two months ago when I sent out the invitation, I hadn’t thought it possible that she would be here tonight. At 92-years-old, she is barely a wisp of a woman. Because of complications associated with a leaky heart, she is only eighty pounds, despite a healthy appetite. And yet, while she may have lost some weight, she hasn’t lost her attitude. “Tell the waitress there’s a draft in here,” she says.

“We’re outside, Grandma,” I say.

Don’t hold this against me, but I had tried to keep the dinner party a secret from her. I’d thought she wasn’t up to the trip, and I hadn’t wanted her to know what she was missing. I guess I should have known better. When she called to ask that a ride be arranged into Brooklyn for her, I may have been caught off guard, but I wasn’t really that surprised. She may be low on energy these days, but she’ll never be low on sass. If she wants something, you’ll know.

Thankfully, she acknowledged that the pre-dinner cocktail hour at my apartment, a fourth-floor walk-up in a rickety old brownstone nearby, was probably out of the question. Earlier in the evening, as I called out words of encouragement to a group of cousins, aunts, and uncles trudging up the dark (“romantic”) staircase to my tiny (“cozy”) studio apartment, I breathed a momentary sigh of relief that they weren’t carrying Gram in tow.

Cocktail hour had been my attempt at trying out what the matriarchs of my family had been doing for years: welcoming us all into their homes with vacuumed carpets and steaming pots and the good china. The faces of those answering the doors on holidays past were weary, but also somehow vibrant, their cheeks pink from the heat of the oven.

Grandma Sara had always been capable of achieving a dinner gathering that looked effortless. And there had been lots. In her lifetime, how many hours had she spent ironing the tablecloths, baking the carrot soufflé, checking the oven once, then again, then a third time to get the noodle kugel just right–crisp on the top, not burned, but cooked all the way through? She was the one to emulate.

For now, I’m stepping into my new role as a woman of the family on tiptoe.

I’m slowly collecting and practicing the recipes, little sets of instructions recited to me by heart. When I visited Gram in Florida last summer, her health was on the decline, so we spent the mornings inside her little apartment, cooking. I stood at the counter, frantically measuring flour, grating zucchini, whisking eggs, while she sat in her bathrobe at the kitchen table, sipping coffee, ordering me around.

I’ve picked up a lot. There is a sweet zucchini and corn loaf and a matzoh ball soup. There is mock chopped liver and pink beet horseradish. There is brisket; there is corned beef; Mandelbrot and coleslaw. Many of these I have tried to make, some of them successfully. My carrot soufflé is getting there.

Tonight, Gram has met us at the restaurant, driven in from New Jersey by my cousin, Drew. They are half an hour late. There was traffic in the tunnel and they got a little lost. Drew had been driving for over two hours. “Thanks, Drew,” I tell him as I help her out of the car. “I owe you one.”

Now seated, I look at her across the table from me. She is small and hunched. The skin on her face is a maze of wrinkles. But her lips, painted a rebellious shade of bright pink, arc into a wide smile when she sees me looking at her, and I can see how thrilled she is to be here.

I must admit, I have to hand it to her. She wouldn’t take “no” for an answer. After years of plopping gefilte fish onto everyone else’s lettuce leaves, she was coming to her granddaughter’s party in Brooklyn. Even if it killed the rest of us to get her here.

Together we eat and talk and, lo and behold, it is a fabulous party. Next time, I will cook. Maybe I’ll give the carrot soufflé another whirl. I will take the torch that’s being passed to me and run a little bit further.

Grandma Sara’s Carrot Soufflé (as dictated verbally to the author):

Ingredients:

1 pound cooked carrots, puréed
3 eggs
¼ cup sugar
2 tablespoons flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 pinch salt
¼ teaspoon nutmeg
1 teaspoon cinnamon
¾ stick butter, melted

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Mix all ingredients in a large bowl. Transfer to casserole dish or bundt pan. Top with corn flakes or brown sugar or nuts or grapenuts. Bake for 1 hour, or until knife comes out clean. Don’t overbake.