The box was purchased on a country road somewhere in Quebec from a guy who said it had belonged to his dear old aunt, a seamstress who used it for buttons. Eight wooden drawers set in a wrought iron-ish metal frame. We knew we paid too much for it but the country road and the dear old aunt got to us. It’s since occurred to me there may not have been an aunt.

Much less buttons.

It’s held recipes since then, its little drawers occasionally stuffed to the point where I’m forced to cull them, one of my great pleasures, letting go of things I have no idea why I kept in the first place, and in the bargain finding things I’d forgotten about… but not why I keep them.

And in this way I stumble upon Heather’s Spicy Fried Fish.

Heather and I worked together two hundred years ago. Me in the office, she in the kitchen, and every morning when I came in to make rye toast for my breakfast, she’d be frying up fish, chicken, rice, for hers. She said this is what she was used to, growing up in Barbados. The fish, especially, always smelled amazing and I always asked how she made it, what was in the stuffing. She’d laugh, a family secret, not possible to share. We started most days like this, eating together, trading a few stories, learning small things about each other over time and when I left that job she surprised me with a gift, a small pin in the shape of two scottie dogs, one black, one white. I must have looked confused. She smiled, it’s us, she said.

Then she gave me a second gift, her recipe for fish, dictated as I scribbled it down.

I wore the pin for years.

The recipe is excellent and well used (evidenced by the kitchen Rorschach) but it’s been awhile.

I think I’ll leave it out to make again.

Maybe even for breakfast (??)

I can almost hear Heather smile.

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