In an old family album I found a photo of a girl, standing on a chair, using a long aluminum spoon to stir the contents of a giant pot on the stove in Grandma’s kitchen. I’m sure it was chicken soup, replete with summer vegetables. I’m less sure that the dark-haired girl reaching to stir is me. Her face is hidden by the outstretched arm. My older cousin, Diane, thinks the photo is of her. The 1950s dress is no help, for I often proudly wore Diane’s hand-me-downs.

Diane and I do agree that the gray vinyl chair—turned from the table, pushed back almost into the niche in Grandma’s blue-tiled kitchen—was placed so we could better reach the pot. We both agree Grandma would not have had us stand on a chair to stir—too dangerous. We think Aunt Claudia probably posed whichever of us it was and snapped the photo when Grandma left the room for a short time. Cooking lessons at that age were more a matter of watching Grandma put together her soups and stews, roll out ravioli, knead bread, shape meatballs.

We also both recall the white wooden cabinet where Grandma’s Fiestaware soup bowls lay behind glass doors. Diane’s favorite was the yellow one. Mine, the periwinkle.

We have argued to the point of laughter over which one of us is the pictured girl, but there’s no date on the back of the picture, and those who could tell us about it are long gone. The mystery remains unresolved. That arm is the problem, hiding the face.

We do and did look a lot alike. But we’re as distinct as the colors of our favorite bowls. I love to cook. Cooking is more a chore for dear Diane. Also weighing on my side are the hours I spent in Grandma’s kitchen while all the other cousins played outside. And the fact that I still make Grandma’s soup and meatballs often, and she gave me her recipes for bread and ravioli.

In addition to the recipes, I own both bowls, the yellow and the periwinkle, gifts from Grandma when I moved into my first apartment, years ago. I only requested the periwinkle, but she handed me both on her one and only visit to my apartment. Perhaps she didn’t remember which one of us liked which bowl? Or, more likely, the gift was meant to keep Diane and me, in years to come, as close as we were as children, slurping soup as we sat at her gray Formica table. If so, that latter strategy succeeded.

Diane has conceded that no matter who’s in that picture, she’s glad it’s now my arm that stirs Grandma’s soup, and that I ladle it out for her into the yellow bowl when she comes to visit.

Vintage snapshot (1950s) of a girl stirring a pot of soup: copyright is held by Joan Leotta, and image appears here with her permission.

Joan Leotta

plays with words on page and stage. She performs tales featuring food, family, nature, and strong women. Internationally published as an essayist, poet, short-story writer, and novelist, she is the author of ten published books, including two poetry chapbooks: Feathers on Stone (2022) and Languid Lusciousness with Lemon (2017). In addition, her writings have appeared or are forthcoming in Brass Bell, Gargoyle Magazine, Impspired, MacQueen’s Quinterly, MysteryTribune, Ovunque Siamo, Pinesong, Poetry in Plain Sight, Silver Birch Press, The Ekphrastic Review, Verse-Virtual, Visual Verse, Yellow Mama, and others.

Her work was nominated for the Pushcart in 2021 and 2022, and for Best of the Net in 2022. Her microfiction “Magic Slippers” received the Penny Fiction 2021 award and was anthologized in From the Depths (Issue 19, Haunted Waters Press). In early 2022, she was named a runner-up in the Frost Foundation Poetry Competition. And her poem “Magritte’s Apple Explains It All” was nominated for Best of the Net 2023 by The Ekphrastic Review.